A half of Hamlet

Hamlet in 75 minutes sounds like a joke: the Reduced Dance Company, perhaps, but choreographer Kim Brandstrup manages to ensure that all the elements - plot, characters, emotions - are present. Some, it is true, get more of a look-in than others - it was only at his death that I could work out which dancer was playing Polonius - but all the essential elements of the story are there.

Tom Stoppard famously turned the story around, so that we saw the court at Elsinore from the partial viewpoint of two minor characters. Brandstrup, in showing us Hamlet as a young man, also makes him a spectator, rather than the central character. I'm not convinced that Hamlet can be a bit player in his own psychodrama, but Brandstrup manages to build a persuasive case, using Craig Givens's gorgeous minimalist grey set as a backdrop for the characters' minds as well as their actions.

Hamlet (the excellent Lee Boggess) is incited by his father (Karl Sullivan) from the moment of his death; Gertrude (Joanne Fong) and Claudius (Kenneth Tharp) practically couple over the dead body. But Brandstrup is better at psyches than sex, and it is Hamlet's engagement, and lack of engagement, with the court that truly brings this piece alive: the blackclad wedges of courtiers moving at speed across the stage pose a threatening backdrop to any action Hamlet contemplates.

As we move into the action, the simple modern dress costumes give way to more stylised period dress: the action is taking Hamlet further from life, from us, reflected in the starker, sharper lighting (by Tina MacHugh), until finally the characters line up against the backdrop, like prisoners in a police line-up.

Brandstrup gives a filmic view of the nightmare that is Elsinore: fast-paced, close-cropped, a grimly beautiful world.

Until tonight. Box Office: 020 7960 4242.

Arc Dance Company: Hamlet