Only a few days remain to see the Melancholy Dane skulk around Coronado Theatre’s version of Elsinore. Their 13th annual “free Shakespeare” Hamlet closes this Sunday. Keith A. Anderson directs.

Hamlet is the Bard’s longest play (Will’s version clocks in at about four hours, but Director Keith A. Anderson has trimmed this one to a bit over two hours) and the one that perhaps has provided the most quotable lines (“Brevity is the soul of wit,” “Frailty, thy name is woman,” “To thine own self be true” are just a few).

You remember Hamlet. He’s the young prince whose dad Hamlet, Sr. was murdered by his uncle Claudius (Martin White), who promptly married Hamlet’s mom Gertrude (Eva Kvaas).

The poor prince (Terence J. Burke), a bit out there mentally to begin with, soon goes over the edge and starts acting really weird – talking to his dad’s ghost; yelling at bewildered girlfriend Ophelia (Anna McMillan) to join a convent; asking an itinerant acting troupe to enact a plot resembling the way his dad was murdered. Of course, he’s plotting a murder of his own. Today he’d have been carted off to the loony bin, but then we’d have missed what many call the best play ever written in English.

Anderson has both shortened the play and used modern English for accessibility. Mary Anderson’s costumes are good, but slow changes of Rosemary King’s set hamper the pacing.

The acting in this most demanding play is spotty. Martin White and Eva Kvaas (as Claudius and Gertrude) fare the best. Terence J. Burke (as Hamlet) tries too hard to make up what he lacks in vocal agility with fussy or expansive gestures. Frank Godinez takes a while to get up to speed as Horatio; new high school graduate Anna McMillan needs to project better.

Shakespeare is a challenge for any theater, usually requiring a large cast and many scene changes in addition to huge acting demands. Community theaters might be wise to stick with the comedies – like Coronado’s recent successful Taming of the Shrew, for example – and leave theatrical Everests like Hamlet to the those with greater resources.

Hamlet plays through Sunday, Oct. 4, at Coronado Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinee Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call 619-435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.