Bringing Chichester's first-ever home-grown Hamlet to the stage

It didn’t happen. And the remarkable thing is that it hasn’t ever happened since. It is only now – 62 years later – that the CFT is finally getting its very own home-produced Hamlet.

Running in The Minerva from September 6-October 4, it stars Giles Terera and has been directed by CFT artistic director Justin Audibert, the culmination, Justin says, of frequent comments.

“The two things that people come up to me most about are ‘When are we going to have some Shakespeare?’ and ‘When can we have some Greek tragedy?’ Those are the two things that are mentioned most, and I just love Shakespeare. So this just feels like a natural fit for me to do the first Shakespeare of my tenure, and to do Hamlet. In this particular play, I think we are really creating the world of Denmark, our version of Denmark.

“But really first of all you need an actor that can play Hamlet. Giles and I had been talking about various things and Hamlet came up and he just seemed absolutely right. You have to have someone that is going to drive four-fifths of the play. It’s as much as that.

“There is an amazing part in Act IV which is all driven by Claudius but ultimately it is Hamlet, and it is such a big play. It is the longest play in Shakespeare, and there are no two ways about it: it is also the most complicated play of Shakespeare's that I've ever done. There are so many problems and obstacles that you have to solve from a technical point of view like how do you do the ghost, and after Hamlet kill Polonius, he has to drag the body off and also you've got a massive sword fight at the end. There is so much going on that you have to find solutions to and to get right.

“But above all you have got to get your Hamlet, someone that can drive a three-hour show, can do the massive physical set pieces but also do the huge solilioquies and make them different, make them drive the piece forward and do them in such a way that's not indulgent. It is a massive feat because those soliloquies are so important. Hamlet is the best example of all Shakespeare's plays where the character is actually thinking on the line and you need to see the character thinking on the line. Being premeditated about it really does not work. The ideas and the reflections on the nature of justice and existence and the big metaphysical questions are really complicated, and I think for an audience to be really interested you need to feel that the actor is having these thoughts in that very moment.

“Hamlet has clear ideas. He's got to work out whether the ghost is telling the truth. He's got to work out how to kill Claudius in such a way that Claudius does not go to heaven and he does not go to hell and you've got to sense that Hamlet is trying to reason his way through it.”

And that’s a key part of the thinking behind putting the play in The Minerva rather than the main-house: “I want the claustrophobia. I want the audience to see the speed of thought that the actors are having to portray. If you are in the Minerva then you will really get that. It's about ideas of heaven and hell, ideas of power and betrayal and revenge, and I want the audience to see the impact of all those things in the faces of the actors. That's what's going to make it feel so powerful. I love the Festival Theatre but it is harder to get the intimate detail at the back of the auditorium. The Festival Theatre lends itself more to our beautiful spectacles.”

Whereas The Minerva, however, gives Justin exactly what he wants for his take on Hamlet: “Shakespeare is writing this play in 1599. It is at the end of the Elizabethan era. People have had the jolly ideas about the Elizabethan era but by 1599 the Elizabethan court is in a really dark and suspicious place. Elizabeth has not named her heir, and the court is full of whispers and conspiracies, and Shakespeare knew that. He was writing about what he knew. It’s not like as if I was writing about Trump. Shakespeare was close to it, and it is that sense that I want to get in the play.”