Ask any actor which part they’ve found the most demanding and there’s a good chance many will simply say Hamlet. Seen as the bard’s magnum opus, those who’ve portrayed the tortured and brilliantly eloquent Prince of Denmark will tell you just how exhausting the role is.

No single character dominates any of Shakespeare’s plays in the same way and whoever is charged with the role is barely offstage throughout the production’s lengthy duration. Consequently, playwrights have felt compelled to give the supporting characters their own moments in the spotlight.

Hamlet’s acquaintances Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were famously given a play of their own by Tom Stoppard, and Ophelia, Hamlet’s spurned love interest, has centre stage in Stephen Berkoff’s play, which premiered in 2001 and is now brought to the Burton Taylor by new company Mustard Seed.

Oddly, instead of presenting audiences with a depiction of Ophelia and Hamlet’s courtship, the play consists, almost entirely, of the two characters reading aloud letters they are writing to each other. Now while this gives intensity to the performance it quickly becomes extremely repetitive.

Hamlet reads aloud his letter, walks off, Ophelia comes on, reads hers, and so it continues. They are together onstage, perhaps twice, in 80 minutes and even then, only briefly.

Moving as some of the two’s declarations of love for each other are, the story gets completely lost in the letters and if you don’t know the plot of Hamlet already, then you stand no chance of understanding the events being talked about. There are also a few attempts at bawdy humour, which are doubtless designed to add a break from the intensity, sadly though, they aren’t terribly funny. This is all a great shame as Amy McGavin and Andrew Johnson are perfectly respectable as Ophelia and Hamlet, and the show is gracefully scored and elegantly lit. Ultimately though, Berkoff’s repetitive, stilted and flawed script is beyond saving.