Get this: “To be or not to be” as flirtation.

At Marin Shakespeare Company, the famous “Hamlet” speech is no soliloquy. Now the lugubrious, caustic Danish prince (Nick Musleh) is bantering with Ophelia (Désirée Freda). Lounging on the edge of a table, they trade lines of verse, completing each other’s thoughts, each upping the ante so that the other has to mine the brain for something smarter and more beautiful to say about whether to hold onto life or not. This Ophelia understands Hamlet as an equal. They’re both artistic souls, a couple of messed-up kids rattling their golden handcuffs, and we get to see their playful chemistry as in few other productions.

That’s just one of many audacious and insightful choices in Jon Tracy’s take on the tragedy, which I saw Friday, June 30, at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre —Marin Shakes’first full outdoor production since the pandemic struck. As the title character learns of his father’s murder and zigzags toward avenging it, Tracy casts scene upon scene in fresh light that laypeople like you and me never would have thought of, even if you’ve witnessed countless other versions of the story, but that reveal and illuminate.

A few examples: When Claudius (Michael Torres), Hamlet’s uncle and the murderer of his father, laments, “O, my offense is rank,” now he, like his nephew, contemplates suicide, and the handgun he flings away can be picked up by eavesdroppers, who’ll do much worse with it. (This confessional scene is a high point for Torres, who regards his own murderous hands as if he’s a newborn babe first discovering body parts.)

In Bridgette Loriaux’s tangy interpretation, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, who’s just made an “o’erhasty” marriage to Claudius, might be both the toughest and the most emotionally perceptive person in Elsinore. When she first gazes upon her new husband, it’s not with maturity’s restraint or a politician’s PR savvy. She glows like a young bride who’s never been married before, making you wonder if this is what she’d wanted all along.

When Ophelia shares with a prying older generation a boxful of love letters from Hamlet, Gertrude is the only person who seems to realize what a big deal that is and wonder what else she’s missed in her nearest kin. Later still, Gertrude is the kind of person who’s liable to hand you a bottle of pills with one hand (everyone self-medicates in this Danish court) and pluck a handgun out of her purse with another. This woman could kill you and have you see it as kindness.

When Hamlet tries to publicly expose Claudius’ guilt via a play-within-a-play, Tracy renders the resulting meta-theater as performance art or avant-garde opera — the kind of thing you could imagine current-day audiences paying to see (in contrast to other, clunky renditions of this scene). Lady Zen singing as the Player King (here called the Clown King) has a vibrato so powerful that her uvula must be beating back and forth like a punching bag in a cartoon. If her acting is tentative, her singing voice can scale peaks, from throaty growls to fluttery whispers.

If performances don’t always rise to the level of the direction, with many speeches more hoping to hit their points than owning them, this “Hamlet” always has something to say other than “because Shakespeare said so.” Here, a casual disregard for life plagues Elsinore; characters are always playing with guns and dancing on the ledges of their graves. The finale’s bloodbath doesn’t surprise; it’s more a miracle that characters survive as long as they do. Is it any wonder that Musleh’s Hamlet gloms onto the first idea someone offers him that comes from beyond this world?

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com