Vengeful ghosts, murdered kings, and tortured princes – Hamlet has it all. Robert Hastie directs Hiran Abeysekera in the role of the tormented Prince of Denmark seeking revenge for his murdered father. This fearless, darkly funny take on Shakespeare’s tale of revenge, madness, and mortality opens at the National Theatre this autumn.

Why should you see Hamlet?
The show has a stellar cast, starring Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera as Hamlet, with Francesca Mills as Ophelia and Alistair Petrie as Claudius.
It’s the first Shakespeare production of Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural season at the National Theatre. If you love Shakespeare and you’re an admirer of Rubsingham’s repertoire, you won’t want to miss this.

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy: full of thrilling drama as well as complex characters, and a good dose of black comedy.

What is Hamlet about?
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The king is dead, and his brother, Claudius, has married the queen and taken the throne. The grieving, melancholy Prince Hamlet finds himself haunted by the ghost of his father, who reveals he was murdered by Claudius and urges Hamlet to avenge him. So Hamlet embarks on a series of schemes and sleuthing, which will lead him down a tragic path to a bloody, violent end.

Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera – who previously played a cold-blooded killer in The Father and the Assassin and a wide-eyed dreamer in Life of Pi – tackles the role of Shakespeare’s most complex hero, while National Theatre Deputy Artistic Director, Robert Hastie (Standing at the Sky’s Edge, Operation Mincemeat) directs. The dark, contemplative tragedy will be given a modern twist, exploring the play’s difficult but all too relevant themes of mortality and grief.

Master storyteller and theatre-maker Indhu Rubasingham is poised to oversee a phenomenal inaugural season as part of her tenure at the National Theatre, and no season would be complete without a splash of Shakespeare. Hamlet is the perfect show to sink your teeth into – harrowing, introspective, and as powerful today as when it was written. No Shakespeare lover or seasoned theatre-goer will want to miss this.