These are some of the kindest things Hamlet has to say about his uncle/stepfather the King Claudius in Shakespeare’s most famous play, soon here in Damien Ryan’s new production for Bell Shakespeare.

“Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?” says actor Sean O’Shea by phone from Townsville, where he’s been playing Claudius, the man who poisons his brother to get his throne and marry his wife.

He quickly cautions me not to take what one character says about another as gospel truth. But come on, I say, Claudius did murder his own brother and he is a political conniver.

True enough, O’Shea agrees, but so are most politicians you can think of. And when Hamlet calls Claudius a “bloat king”, a “satyr” and “a mildew’d ear”, surely it tells you more about the Melancholy Dane, a mature-age university student obsessed with his mother’ sex life.

“Of course, he hates me… it’s a major problem that his mother’s shacked up with another man,” O’Shea says, arguing that there is a serious disconnect between how Hamlet sees Claudius and how everyone else sees him.

So what’s it like to play that smiling, damnèd villain?

“I’m trying to find the real man,” he says. “The politician does a terrible thing, but he’s a real man who wants to run the country… that’s a much more familiar scenario.”

Director Ryan has given O’Shea and Josh McConville (the gloomy prince) full rein to develop their complex relationship within a Denmark as full of devious plotting as Canberra.

“Sometimes they play Claudius as a man with a big fat gut who likes to eat and drink a lot, but I’d ask, what about seeing him as this guy who can actually run the country, is an astute politician?” O’Shea says.

The emotionally volatile Hamlet may not have made a good leader – “there’s a feeling that Hamlet’s time would eventually come, but hasn’t yet come”.

O’Shea admits Claudius has done “one extremely bad thing” by murdering his brother, Hamlet’s father, but is trying to fix the situation. “He thinks, let’s just move on, but life comes back to bite him.”

“I think he’s terribly in love with the Queen, but the relationship starts to break down from the closet scene on – we mark that quite clearly – and Gertrude starts to take Hamlet’s side, so he did it for nothing… but he’s quite devastated when she drinks the poison cup in the last scene and there’s always a gasp when she picks up the cup and everyone goes, ‘Oh, no!’”

Bell Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, The Playhouse, October 13-24, bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.