Why do we like Hamlet so much? He carelessly dispatches old Polonius, kills both Claudius and Laertes, drives Ophelia mad and is beastly to his mother. But we do, and so do other characters in the play. His father calls him a “noble youth”, Ophelia calls him a “noble mind”, Horatio calls him “sweet prince”, and the rest of us, the distracted multitude, should admire him just as passionately, verbose and dithering murderer though he is. It’s essential to the play’s success.

Jude Law’s Hamlet is not deeply lovable enough for this to be a truly moving version of the play. He’s a bit too cool. We don’t care quite enough, though as ever we admire his quicksilver intelligence and limitless imagination, and sympathise with his wretched situation, an air-and-fire intellectual in a muddy material world, thus be-netted round with villainies.This is a hard-working and successful performance, though. Law’s delivery is excellently crisp and clear, full of sibilant articulacy. “This quintessence of dussst,” he says. There are well-judged emphases, abrupt changes of voice and self-interruptions, and he shows a fine black-comic touch at crucial moments.

Law is evidently more comfortable as the brooding, solitary melancholic than as the raving manic. Other performances — David Tennant’s springs unavoidably to mind — capture both moods without strain. Here, you are aware that Law is acting hard, a little self-conscious in his frenetic movements and his “wild and whirling words”, against the current of his more natural, laid-back temperament. He is quite at ease with the great soliloquies, though.

Not all the performances are as convincing as they should be, especially from some of the younger actors, but Peter Eyre is genuinely noble as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, with his somnambulist tread and rolling basso profundo voice. At the same time as being the unearthly spirit of a departed king, he is also simply an old, tired man, still chained to the earth by an unresolved injustice, when, like most old people, he would really rather say a final farewell to the world, with small regret.

Also notable is Matt Ryan as Horatio, whose quietness and stillness communicate with subtlety his unswerving loyalty to Hamlet. And Ron Cook is an effectively understated Polonius — poor old Polonius, who believes that the chaos of the world can be governed with a few sensible maxims. It is Hamlet who is in touch with the real, ancient, Dionysiac mystery of tragedy, hence his surprising but acute dismissal of the ponderous courtier as a “great baby... not yet out of his swaddling clothes”.

Christopher Oram’s set isn’t subtle, but it works: Elsinore as a claustrophobic, inescapable prison. Indeed, all of Denmark is a prison, as Hamlet observes. A feeble light falls on the action from high, unreachable windows, and costume is largely plain black modern dress for all. During the court scenes, a huge red curtain falls across the back, and when it lifts again, you see beyond not the wild, rocky coast of Elsinore, but only another wall, black and damp and towering away beyond sight. No sky, and no way out. Such a stage is the gloomy and oppressive opposite of the infinite space of Hamlet’s mind — except, of course, that he has bad dreams. This is a bad dream of a palace.

It’s a fast-paced production, despite all the philosophy, with characters appearing stage left before others have even departed right; and with some judicious cuts, it adds up to a very audience-friendly three hours or so. Michael Grandage’s direction is strikingly modest. Out of respect for the text, presumably, he adds few visual effects and theatricals. “To be or not to be” has to be freshened up somehow, though, and here it is imaginatively delivered from behind a veil of falling snow.

Polonius’s death is especially good. A thin white gauze comes down; we are on Polonius’s side, spying with him on Hamlet and his mother arguing furiously beyond. When Polonius is stabbed, he cries and falls, rolling the veil down with him. This is an ingenious bit of staging, but there are few others. You might also feel there is too much random squatting down, which can look irritatingly actorish if overdone. But the general modesty on show at least makes this a production of spare simplicity and clarity, revealing fresh nuances and insights in the text at every turn, as so rich a piece should on each viewing. This is not a Hamlet that will still be talked about in 10 years’ time, but it is, nevertheless, a perfectly solid and respectable performance.

Hamlet is the last of the four plays in the Donmar’s West End stint, though it runs until August. Along with Twelfth Night, Ivanov and Madame de Sade, it has been an admirable success, and with Sunday matinées and the exceptional £10 tickets in the balcony on offer, you sincerely hope there will be a repeat season next year.

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