‘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.
Above all else, the actors must be kind. When we were casting at the Globe, we always enquired around about how an actor was to work with. The Globe was reliant on actors – not on directors or designers. Trust and goodwill, as well as quality, were paramount. Trust that your actor would show up on time, cover your back and give you what you needed on stage was at the heart of our work. The importance of trust, and goodwill, were maximised on this tour by the many other potential difficulties involved. We needed great actors, but beyond that we needed great people. Luckily, we got them.
There is a magical section – a montage – in the film The Sting when Paul Newman wanders around putting his old team of conmen back together. He surprises them in their present place of work, be it a bank or a bookies, and, appearing discreetly at the back of a crowd in their eyeline, touches his nose lightly or tips his hat to them. They immediately drop what they are doing, whatever it might be, to come and work with him. It is a witty visual hymn to the never-diminishing bonds of the team. The early part of our casting became a little like that, as we gathered together a core of trusted old friends. To share between them the senior roles – Claudius, Polonius, Gravedigger, Ghost, Priest, First Player and sundry old soldiers – we recruited three old friends who if not grizzled were battle hardened – John Dougall, Keith Bartlett, and the king of the Maori acting community, Rawiri Paratene. To play the several lines of younger men – Laertes, Marcellus, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric and Fortinbras – there were two actors who had played already in our previous Hamlet tours of 2011 and 2012, Tommy Lawrence and Matt Romain, and another who had spent several summers with us, Beruce Khan. An actress who had played a previous tour, Miranda Foster, a thoroughbred, was keen to play Gertrude, the Player Queen and Second Gravedigger. Two further friends, actresses of enormous promise, Amanda Wilkin and Phoebe Fildes, came on board to play the Gertrude line, and the Ophelia line, and to cross gender lines as Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Horatio. Four stage managers – Dave McEvoy, Adam Moore, Carrie Burnham and Becky Austin – miracles of industry and phlegm, were prepared and happy to put life on hold for a couple of years.
All these old allies had hard questions about the working of the tour, about the pay and the conditions and the security and the time off, which we answered. But given the length of the commitment, and the hole it would punch in their lives, the amount they took on trust was affirming. They knew it was an adventure, they trusted us, we tipped our hat to them, and they came on board. There was something magical in their leap into the dark, something close to the heart of being in the theatre. Running away to join the circus is a cliché, but it has an application beyond Pinocchio – freedom, movement and independence are its essence.
We had three more members of the squad to find – a further young actress, Jennifer Leong, who came recommended by a brilliant Cantonese company we had worked with from Hong