and globe, give a little insight into our world as it is now, and also of this extraordinary play which still shadows and mirrors and changes that world.
| 1 United Kingdom, London Middle Temple Hall | 18–20 April 2014 |
| United Kingdom, London Shakespeare’s Globe | 23–26 April |
1
WHO’S THERE?
ACTUS PRIMUS SCOENA PRIMA
Enter Barnardo and Franciscus two centinels
Barnardo: Who’s there?
THERE IS NO BETTER OPENING line – the simplicity, the affront of it – ‘Who’s there?’ It works purely on its own surface, a nervous soldier on a battlement, in the dark and cold, asking with a shiver who walks towards him. It starts the play at a thriller pace and sets the blood tingling. We opened our production with the cast milling around amongst the audience and belting out a rousing song. It was interrupted the first time for a speech of welcome, with music underscoring, and then a second time abruptly – dead-stopping wandering, singing and music with a barked ‘Who’s there?’ The play was underway, swords were out, tension bristled the air. The first two words are an instant challenge to the theatricality of the event. Unless the director is very eccentric (many are), the old soldier – Barnardo – will be looking out front. The question immediately includes and excludes everyone watching. It makes them participatory because addressed, and shuts them out because the soldier cannot see, cannot know them – ‘Who’s there?’ Two syllables and immediate unease.
Top of the Frequently Asked Questions as we set out on this adventure was ‘Why Hamlet?’ We flirted with other titles, but in our bones knew we were circling around and always returning to Hamlet. We had done two small-scale tours of Hamlet, in 2011 and 2012, so were confident that it worked, though we did cast our eyes along the waterfront. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has an unsurpassable flight and grace, but an actor squeezing into a tattered fairy costume a year down the road might have been disheartened; Twelfth Night is not robust enough of tone to survive the exigencies of touring; and King Lear is just too dark. Romeo and Juliet was a clear candidate because of its iconic status, but the play is structurally broken-backed. Packed with beautiful poetry and a searing story, it loses its way after the death of Mercutio and never quite regains it until the end. Carrying that Fourth Act around the world would have been dispiriting. Also, and this was the weightiest problem, Romeo and Juliet reveals its own meanings after a brief search. Six months in, and the company would have uncovered its secrets. They would have known what they were playing, which is fatal. If the tour was to be a valuable journey for the company, and thus for audiences, the play had to remain elusive. This was guaranteed with Hamlet. Hamlet is beautiful, a necessity, it is ram-packed with iconic moments which translate across cultures, a necessity, but most important of all it is mysterious, the greatest necessity.
The protean nature of the text was as important as its elusiveness. We were visiting a vast variety of cultures, of peoples caught at disparate political and historical moments. There is something about the kaleidoscope of possible responses to Hamlet which suited a journey of such rapid and extensive change. Hamlet can inspire and it can challenge; it can provoke and it can console; it can rebuke and it can comfort. We needed to travel with a story that could talk to people in all these ways. It also needed to talk with purpose. Not with a message, God help us, but with a voice that had energy and purpose in its pulse. Hamlet is often given an obscuring energy as prescribed by a Victorian idea of tragedy – ponderousness and pain suffocate it with a pillow of self-glorying glumness. We didn’t do glum at the Globe – the sheer glee of the room would not allow it. Hamlet has a gleaming energy, and through its bright and shining leading man it has its eyes on the horizon of the future.
As well as talking with variety, and with purpose, it is most important that Hamlet talks openly. It is not a muttering play, a manipulative play, nor a dishonest play. In its heart, and through the soliloquies which stud its progress, it is open. The paradox of being freely open and freely mysterious is a Shakespearean paradox. The man in the corner at a party, all dark and silent and brooding, is nine times out of ten not a man of mystery; he’s a man with not much to say. It is perfectly possible to be garrulous and to conceal. This play manages to be naked and invisible at the same time. A paradox contained within those opening words, ‘Who’s there?’
So having decided on the play, we had to work out how to do it. Then the question ‘who’s there?’ developed a new pertinence. Who was there to help?
* * *
To focus our brains, we kicked off the same way we had our 2012 festival, by throwing a big breakfast for all of London’s ambassadors. This served as a mark in the sand, a way of getting ourselves organised and a way of making connections. The plan was to introduce ourselves, explain our plan and plead for help. A hundred ambassadors in a room at nine o’clock in the morning is a bizarre sight. Because of the variety and the early hour, everyone exaggerates their own distinctiveness, playing up their national stereotypes. A South American ambassador threw about extravagant Latin charm; the French representative looked unimpressed; the Scandinavians were blonde and kind, looking after the shy wallflowers in the corner; the Russian representative looked suspicious; a representative from the Far East boggled us with their efficiency. The event started to look like an oversized xenophobic sitcom.
Tom Bird, our executive producer, a warm and scruffy presence, made a great speech, then we led everyone from our restaurant into the theatre and onto our stage. This was a calculated thrill: standing on the Globe’s oak boards is a privilege and never failed to give a jolt of energy. I stood in front of a map of the world and talked everyone through the journey. With outstretched finger, I outlined our imagined route across a beautiful map set up on an old wooden easel. From Europe through North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, West Africa down to the South, then across to Australasia, all around the Pacific Islands, and then working slowly back from the Far East and finishing with East Africa before heading home. With a few detours to avoid war and epidemics, this was pretty much the route we ended up following. There was something antiquated, of course, about a man standing beside a map of the world and pointing out how we would chart a course through distant lands. It was an irony we were aware of and played up.
The morning was a success. It galvanised us into action, though less than a tenth of our eventual relationships would come from this route. Governments can be useful, and they can be a burden. We were at pains to point out, from the beginning and throughout, that we were not going anywhere to play to local dignitaries or to be an extension of a diplomatic garden-party circuit. That we wanted to meet people and to play to audiences of people. In this we were 95 per cent successful. The number of countries we travelled to where tickets were free and where the audience was generously inclusive was one of the joys of the enterprise. There were a handful of cases where we felt we were being exploited and manipulated by a government to serve a purpose, and we pushed back. But in the vast majority of cases, we encountered innocence and enthusiasm. So the breakfast worked, and set a number of global hares running for us to chase. Business cards were collected in prodigious numbers, and the phones started to buzz.
* * *
The next big challenge was to announce the project to the press. This was ever a delicate business, since the dangers were twofold. First, that they would ignore it completely; second, that they would seek out ways to ridicule the whole thing. Why this is their collective first instinct is beyond me, but there you go, we get the press we deserve. We knew that we needed an endorsement
