I don’t much care for this Prince Hamlet.

No, not the sparingly adorned, oft-witty production of Shakespeare’s classic of grief and revenge, directed with a clever and thoughtful touch by Chris Coleman, artistic director of the Denver Center’s Theatre Company. And not actor Ty Fanning, who brings some unexpected and understated notes of snark to this interpretation of the prince.

The problem is the prince himself.

It hasn’t always been so. Sometimes the ruminating, sad-sack Dane has been my guy, much the way ambivalence is a favorite state. How he gnaws on those monologues with their fathoms of mournfulness and boatloads of existential quandaries. But here he’s rather off-putting. Look at him leaning against a wall early on, arms crossed and sullen in only the way a privileged scion can be. His mother, Gertrude (Rebecca Watson) has gotten married too soon after his father’s death — to his father’s brother, Claudius (Brian Vaughn), no less — and he’s on a low boil. And this is before he grows certain that his new father-uncle was responsible for the death of his own father.

Coleman and cast have done something intriguing with the tale of a murdered monarch (Birk Berkes) haunting his son into action, into revenge, into a murder: They invite a different — arguably less charitable — read on the entirety of the goings-on in Denmark. As in the series “Succession,” something is rotten with this family, and not simply because of Claudius’ fratricidal power play. It’s also because Hamlet’s budding, brooding privilege stinks.

Recently, a friend and one-time theater critic shared a link showing a parade of very impressive British actors offering Papaa Essiedu (the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company) advice on the right reading of “Hamlet. Act 3 Scene 1.” That would be the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy. Not only does this video elicit joy, it also provides a hilarious and apt lesson in the ways a line might be tweaked.

For where should the accent fall? It’s a question that can be put to many of Shakespeare’s indelible lines. But what about the play itself? Take the Denver Center’s reprise of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” from a few years back in which George becomes the most interesting character in the overheated room, wrenching that role from his bitter half, Martha. And while Joel Coen’s 2021 black-and-white film, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” starred Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, it was Macduff and the fate of his wife and children that was most riveting.

A shift in emphasis or a change in approach can open theatergoers to new interpretations and draw their attention to different persons of interest. In this “Hamlet,” the power’s the thing.

Hamlet’s treatment of Orphelia (Maeve Moynihan) and his mother, Gertrude (Rebecca Watson), has always been rough, but here it’s downright objectionable. “Cruel to be kind,” my arse. Hamlet’s coming into his status. In a gesture that might surprise veterans of the tragedy, Coleman works off a script in which the “to be” soliloquy occurs earlier.

Instead of arriving like one of Shakespeare’s greatest hits, Hamlet’s recitation sounds like he’s test-driving it, not yet fully certain of its mortal implications. Fanning’s exploratory tone provides a telling counterpoint to Hamlet’s musings about Yorick later. There’s a maturity to his Act 5 graveside considerations of the court jester who pleased him as a child. Over the course of the play, Hamlet’s been putting away childish things.

In the context of a patriarchal order, is it a surprise that he first exerts his burgeoning power — in this tale, a quality too synonymous with violence — on the people who have so much less of it? Moynihan’s embodiment of Ophelia’s descent into madness is exquisite, the most achingly human thing in the play.

Hamlet’s later proclamations of love for Ophelia, to her brother and his friend, Laertes (David Lee Huynh), come across as so much nonsense. It shares whiffs of the hardly sincere prayers of contrition that Claudius utter before tumbling back into Claudius being Claudius. Much like his uncle and, arguably, that demanding ghost of a father, Hamlet doesn’t really know what love is. As Hamlet becomes more self-assured, the violence mounts.

That so well-known a play can, like the leaves of fall, cast different hues offers an object lesson about Shakespearean work, and perhaps theater in general. It’s said that each night of the same play is different. This holds true for productions. They offer new reasons to return.

Accentuating the Norse setting of this production, the costumes by Meghan Anderson Doyle recall another work about the exercising of violence as power: “Game of Thrones,” in which there weren’t many heroes who didn’t also indulge in their tragically lethal flaws.

To trick Claudius into revealing his guilt, Hamlet calls upon a theater troupe. Players portraying a king and queen dance happily in front of Gertrude and Claudius. When the play-acting king retires, bidding his wife good night, his rogue of an assailant sneaks in with poison.

Ophelia’s decline offers one of the great and truthful statements about so-called collateral damage — as well a lesson in complicated fathers, hers being Polonius (Todd Cerveris), the sycophantic counsel to Claudius. But the play provides a smartly staged argument for another place where truth(s) can be revealed without real violence: art and, in this instance, the theater.

“Hamlet” opens onto a spare and handsome set (by Chika Shimizu) that could be seen as a meditation on the many shades of gray. The set seemed to promise a production that would hew to the gray areas of ambivalence and ambiguity, the stuff of many a production of “Hamlet.” But the set doesn’t stay in that zone of uncertainty any more than the Danish prince does. Beneath the lights (by Paul Whitaker) of the palace, it grows sharper. Not unlike its titular hero.

Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in theater and film.