At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hiran Abeysekera Prepares to Play a Hamlet for Our Times

Vogue: Do you remember the day you were first asked to take on the role of Hamlet?

Hiran Abeysekera: Rob [Hastie] messaged me, asking if I would like to come for a coffee. We sat outside the Understudy on the South Bank of the Thames, and he said that he was going to come and join Indhu [Rubasingham, artistic director of the National]. I asked him what he’d like to do, and he said that he’d like to do Hamlet with me. He just dropped it—he said, “What do you say?”

What was it like, hearing that from the incoming associate artistic director of the National?

I’m so grateful for what Indhu and Rob are doing with me, because I feel like, with roles like Hamlet and then The Jungle Book, there is this belief that they’re putting in me, and that’s making me feel much stronger and capable of these things. I have such self-doubt, and when people like Indhu and Rob put their belief in me—I’m hugely grateful for that.

Now you’re reprising the role and bringing it to New York. Are you preparing for it any differently than when you first performed it in London?

It’ll be a different audience. This play is so dependent on the audience and what their vibe is. I want to see what New York will bring to my performance. With the soliloquies, I’ve been trying to really connect with the audience and really speak to them—rather than it being a performance of verse, having it be questions asked of, and figured out with, the audience. When I was doing Life of Pi, I felt that they were much more engaged and much more vocal about their feelings as the play was going on, and I wonder what will happen with this. At the end of the [London] run, I was feeling excited about it, but I think, after a break, I’m feeling a bit nervous again!

Where do you think that’s coming from?

I think I may have taken for granted the size of Hamlet and what it means to perform it at the National. I think I may have underestimated the impact that it would have and the weight of it all. Now that I have done it, I know what it is, and it probably won’t be the same, but I’m a bit apprehensive about revisiting it again. I feel like I’ve done it, and it was a difficult task. Even though I enjoyed it and I loved it, there was a pressure that I didn’t fully understand until it was over.

There’s a real physicality and emotional depth to your Hamlet. Have you thought about the relationship between his self-expression and the constraints of masculinity within his role at court?

He is very open with the audience, isn’t he? He tells them everything. I have wondered what they are to him—the audience—why he feels comfortable telling them so much. I think it’s a survival tactic, right? If he doesn’t speak about it with the audience, he’ll probably explode with all that is going on. So there is a sense of desperation, and also a sense of relief that they are there to hear his thoughts and feelings. We tried to find this relationship with them as if they were his friend. But then, throughout the play, certain interactions change. At one point, when he thinks the audience is on his side and they don’t reply to him the way he wants, he suddenly goes, “Oh, maybe there falls, too, their friendship.”