a blank, then, just as we were about to send out a press release, an email came through:
The six simplest words in the English language are TO BE OR NOT TO BE. There is hardly a corner of the planet where these words have not been translated. Even in English, those who can’t speak the language will at once recognise the sound and exclaim ‘Shakespeare!’ Hamlet is the most all-encompassing of Shakespeare’s plays. Everyone, young or old, can today find an immediate identification with its characters, their pains and their interrogations. To take Hamlet in its original language around the world is a bold and dynamic project. It can bring a rich journey of discovery to new audiences everywhere.
This comes with every wish for all your projects.
Ever,
Peter
This was a boon. Peter Brook, the great director and visionary of internationalism, was the right person. He is a sage soul who has long since reached a place of international respect. His words were dropped into the press release, and out it went.
All on that front was going well, then two weeks before we went into rehearsals we were approached by the Sunday Express asking how we felt about going to North Korea. We explained that we were going to every country in the world, that everyone deserved Hamlet, and that North Korea was full of human beings. They started talking about how Kim Jong-un had killed his uncle and had him fed to the pigs. It was clear their agenda was set. The journalist was an intern working part-time there and (fair play to her) was the only person who had worked out there might be a story in this. We discovered that she had got a condemnation out of Amnesty International. I had been a fully paid-up and admiring member of Amnesty for many years and was miffed that they hadn’t contacted us about it. I rang their press officer, who had made the statement to the freedom-fighters of the Sunday Express. He was quick to make his feelings clear: ‘We believe North Korea is an oppressive regime, with no respect for human rights, and that it is wrong for you to stage Hamlet there.’
‘Well, we see the point on human rights, but we are taking this show to every country in the world, and North Korea is a country—’
‘You’re doing what?’
‘We’re going to every country in the world.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, did you not know that?’
‘No, I thought you were just going to North Korea.’
‘Well, we’re stupid, but we’re not that stupid.’
‘No, really, every country in the world? Wow, great idea.’
‘Yes, that’s the only reason we’re going to North Korea. Does that change your opinion now you know why we’re going?’
A long pause. Then . . .
‘We believe North Korea is an oppressive regime, with no respect for human rights, and that it is wrong for you to stage Hamlet there.’
The story ran. It made a minor splash in itself, but it set a ball rolling that followed us around the world, and the North Korea question popped up with deadening frequency. We were able to hone our response early – that we were travelling to play to people; that we were not there to defend any regimes, we were there to defend Hamlet; and that we believed that every country was better off for the presence of Hamlet. This response became practised, maybe over-practised. It would have been great to say more. That aside from North Korea being a murderous and mad dictatorship, which is a given and a disgrace, it often seems that if it wasn’t there, people would invent it, since it fulfils a function that the rest of the world needs. Every playground looks to find one kid to ostracise, every village needs to choose one family that it treats as beyond the pale.
* * *
Our first Hamlet tour, before we decided to go global, had begun in Margate in 2011. We had such fun doing it, and audiences lapped it up so greedily, we toured it again the next year, with a large section in the USA. No one ever felt it was definitively this or that, but it felt fit for purpose. The second tour I wasn’t free to direct, so asked Bill Buckhurst, an actor transitioning to directing, and doing so well, to take the model I had created – same set, same text and same music – and to make it better. He went with the brightness and energy of our approach, and filled it with a greater urgency and need to tell itself. For the round-the-world tour, I asked Bill to work on it with me, so that we might have the best of both productions. Happily, he agreed.
Together with its designer, Jonathan Fensom, we had come up with a loose aesthetic that resembled a 1930s socially progressive touring company, like Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl’s Theatre of Action outfit. Donning a cloak here or a hat there, the company could quickly acquire the shapes and silhouettes of Elizabethan clothing. Over the two previous tours, working with two composers, Laura Forrest-Hay and Bill Barclay, we had put together a suite of music and songs which helped define the evening. Warm folky songs to relax the air and dispel the Shakespeare/Hamlet fear; and utilising the skills of the actor-musicians, a bit of everything else – some fanfare music, some atmospheric scrapings for the Ghost, some keening violin work to skim across transitions, a gentle pipe tune to introduce Ophelia, drums to punch the urgency along. Everything played live, and everything in sight. No concealment at the Globe: a show was a show.
At the end, as in all Globe shows, an eruptive and joyous jig, choreographed by the jig-meister Siân Williams. Every show at the first Globe – even a tragedy – would end with a jig, where the whole company danced together. In the original Globe, they would interrupt the dance, and the comedian in the company would tell jokes. We didn’t go that far, but we did enshrine the spirit of jigging. It is a wonderful way of cleansing the theatre after the emotion spent in it, of letting the air in the room shrug off any residual pain with good grace. In the jig for Hamlet, the dead bodies left sprawled across the stage – Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet – were one by one finger-clicked back to life, with an invitation to a dance. They rose to join. Many interpreted this as a message about bringing the dead back to life, but in fact it was just a solution to the perennial problem of how to get dead bodies off a stage. The jig started slow and then accelerated to a thigh-slapping, hand-clapping frenzy that never failed to raise a joyous cheer. These were the bare bones, and they were bare indeed, of the production we had made. At the end of the first half, we did the dumbshow which the text demands. It started with two of the actors lowering two planks to meet each other. Written on them was ‘TWO PLANKS AND A PASSION’, an old actor’s phrase defining all you need to make theatre happen. That was the spirit of the show. Now we needed actors to flesh it out.
* * *
Casting was always going to be the biggest challenge. Peter Brook says that casting is 80 per cent of what he does, and he spends careful years doing it. He invites potential colleagues to hang out and befriends them, long before he thinks of offering them a role. We didn’t have that amount of time but respected the care in the process. When people asked, I said we were looking for ‘actor-astronauts’, people of balance and strength who could float out in space for a couple of years. Actors who could keep themselves steady, take good care of each other and keep their minds on the task in front of them.
Everyone’s definition of good actors is different. I favour those who bring energy to the room, who bring wit to the language, who have heart but don’t show it off, and who are steadfastly and uniquely themselves. Many directors want actors who erase their individuality to conform to the director’s idea of a syncopated uniformity. I like individuals. Uniformity on stage breaks my heart; it is not a suitable response to plays or a world full of dappled things.
