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 of some sort, from a source of unimpeachable integrity. We put out many virtue-seeking feelers and felt we were drawing 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