There's no way around it: 'Hamlet' is a big play. It is, in fact, the longest of Shakespeare's 38 works and arguably his most influential. The title role can make a career, and that's what it appears to be doing right now for Rory Kinnear at England's Royal National Theatre. The Carnegie in Covington is hosting a rare filmed performance of Kinnear performing 'Hamlet' captured live in high definition.  

What's on the page gets on the Monmouth Theater stage. Words and plot are explicated with energy, clarity and conviction — but there's little resonance to Shakespeare's 400-year-old tale of howling revenge.   

For his handsome, new, close-focused production of Hamlet at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC), Artistic Director Brian Isaac Phillips has distilled and intensified the drama’s stark internals, stripping away affairs of state, concentrating on family conflict and reducing the running time to about three hours (four is the norm).