Yeah, I saw it live, both in the park and the following winter in the company's studio space – fairly different productions because of the possibilities/limitations of the respective spaces (the park's was much broader, and the studio's more intimate and intense, but both good in their own ways and both surprisingly funny). I call it definitive because I thought they brought unprecedented clarity and insight to the text – all other productions since then, I feel like, to some extent, they're just saying the words, whereas in this one they really understood them, and in doing so we understood them too, what was under and inside the language rather than just on top of it. Hamlet himself was the perfect mix of profound overthinker and studenty manchild, but all the characters really rang, and their relationships – Ophelia was a fully rounded human being, not just a victim; the Polonius family's relationship of surface tension with underlying love; the just-on-the-verge-of-uncomfortable sexual frisson between Gertrude and Claudius which made Hamlet's irritation so very understandable; Horatio being an actual person instead of a dumb post for Hamlet to talk at, and a lovable sympathetic person at that... I hesitate to say 'best' about any interpretation of the play, because that's so subjective, but their takes on characters and staging of scenes did seem to bring more out of the text, and build it into something even bigger than itself, in a way I haven't seen any other production do. Someday I want to draw the whole play how they did it, but there is so much to do in the meantime ... I have marked up my script with everything I can remember about it, though, lest I forget. :) Pretty much everything under my Hamlet tag on Tumblr is based on that production.

Is the Russian one still on iPlayer? I'm in (appropriately) Denmark right now so can't watch it, but would love to when I get back ... You've got me curious!