The Tamesis
Fashion: Do you remember the day you were first asked to play Hamlet?
Hiran Abesekera as Rob [Hastie] Send me a message and ask if I want to come for a cup of coffee. We were sitting outside Understudy on the south bank of the Thames and he said he was coming to join Indhu [Rubasingham, artistic director of the National]. I asked him what he wanted to do and he said what he wanted to do village with me. He just threw it away – he said, “What did you say?”
How does it feel to hear the incoming Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theater say that?
I’m so grateful to Indhu and Rob for everything they’ve done for me because I feel like, playing a character like this village and then jungle bookthey instilled this belief in me, which made me feel stronger and more capable of accomplishing these things. I had a lot of self-doubt and I was so grateful when people like Indhu and Rob believed in me.
Now you get to reprise that role and bring it to New York. Is your preparation different from when you first performed in London?
It’s going to be a different audience. The show relies heavily on the audience and their vibe. I wanted to see what New York would bring to my show. With monologues, I’ve been trying to really connect with the audience and really talk to them—as opposed to performing poetry, asking questions of the audience and solving them with them. when i do The life of piI feel like as the drama goes on and they get more involved and more vocal about their feelings, I wonder where this will go. at the end [London] I was really excited when I was running, but I think after taking a break, I was a little nervous again!
Where do you think this comes from?
I think I might take size for granted village And what it means to perform at nationals. I think I may have underestimated the impact it had and its importance. Now that I’ve done it, I know what it is and that it probably won’t be the same, but I’m a little worried about revisiting it again. I feel like I’ve done it, and it’s a huge undertaking. As much as I enjoyed it and loved it, there was a tension that I didn’t fully understand until it was over.
Your Hamlet has real physical and emotional depth. Have you considered the relationship between his self-expression and the constraints of masculinity in his courtly role?
He’s very open to the audience, isn’t he? He told them everything. I wanted to know what they meant to him – the audience – and why he was willing to tell them so much. I think it’s a survival strategy, right? If he didn’t talk to the audience about it, he might explode from what happened. So there was a sense of despair but also a sense of relief that they were there to hear his thoughts and feelings. We try to build this relationship with them as if they were his friends. But then, throughout the show, certain interactions change. At one point, when he thought the audience was on his side and they weren’t responding to him the way he wanted, he suddenly said, “Well, maybe their friendship is gone, too.”
