This'll probably only work once, but, hey:
Think of it as the type of Shakespeare's early-days soliloquy: Direct talking to the audience, and not one of his later-days ones: Audience overhears character talking to himself. Or rather, think of it as a hybrid, direct address to the audience AS character thinks things through.
Hamlet comes on stage, solus, (yes, Claude and Polly are hiding). He paces, thinking. Everyone knows what's coming. But he stays silent until things feel really awkward, like Michael Jackson at the Superbowl. Then he turns to the audience, looks directly around the room for as long as anyone can stand it and he says, "to be." And the house lights come on full. Light explodes everywhere, and (timing here is important) the lights stay bright just long enough for the average member to start to have a glimmer of what's going on, and he says, lights going dark at "or," "or not to be."
And the brightness of the lights before make this darkness as dark as can be.
Hamlet goes on in an explanatory way. He hasn't noticed the lights going up or down. "That is the question" (i.e. "that this play is asking"). People's eyes adjust. Hamlet is in no hurry to get through this speech. Just as the eyes start to see the outline of Hamlet/actor, the stage lights start to come up, but so slowly that no one can tell whether that is what is happening or whether their eyes are continuing to adjust.
He goes through the rest of the speech as though he's explaining the play to the audience. But the meaning is occuring to him at the same time. Or at least the illustrations and examples are occurring to him in real time.
He melts back into the play at the sight of Ophelia.
NB: This also helps us over the "bourne" problem. In the play he seems to have forgotten that he's seen a ghost. But in this performance, he's letting you know that that is a play, and this is real life.
