You plan to present a new radical production of Hamlet. But it’s a long play and you only have a small cast. It will need a fair bit of pruning and you’ll have to lose some characters or at least reduce their importance. You will leave in the soliloquies of course, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can go, as can the players – you can just mention that Claudius has been disturbed by a play. Polonius’s advice to Laertes holds things up a bit, so you can lose it. Indeed you probably don’t have to see Laertes until the final fight scenes. After all, Gertrude has told us he’s pissed off by Ophelia’s death. You don’t really need the gravedigger, but you should leave him in because you can get some ocker laughs out of him. And the ghost? Well the ghost is probably gender neutral, so you can get Fiona to play them.