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Director Robert O’Hara’s noir version of ‘Hamlet,’ starring Patrick Ball and premiering at Mark Taper Forum, audaciously but incoherently toys with Shakespeare’s tragedy.

But O’Hara’s film noir approach has precedent in none other than Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning 1948 movie, still the most prestigious screen adaptation of the play, no matter how dated it might seem to us today.

Opera in its advertisements likens it to film noir.

But he wanted to live “the L.A. noir life,” he says, and no other vehicle seemed more appropriate.

In the highly stylized universe of Hollywood noir, glamour and mental illness walk hand-in-hand; entitlement and privilege run amok.