Like many before him – Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott and David Tennant – Tom Hiddleston is taking on the role of Hamlet on the London stage.
The production will be directed Sir Kenneth Branagh, who also directed Hiddleston’s film Thor (2011) and is the president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada). The production will be a collaboration by Rada and Branagh’s theatre company, and will be staged in Rada’s 160-seat theatre for just three weeks.
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's best-known plays, and has had legions of adaptations on the stage and on screen. Yet, Hiddleston – who is a Rada graduate – thinks it will offer him 'almost limitless possibilities for interpretation'.
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‘I can’t wait to explore them with this great cast at Rada,’ he said. ‘Kenneth Branagh and I have long talks about working on the play together, and now felt like the right time, at the right place.’
The show will be staged at Rada’s Jerwood Vanbrugh theatre in London from 1 to 23 September. The ballot for tickets is open now and will close online at 6pm on Sunday 6 August, and at 5pm on Saturday 5 August over the phone. The money raised from the production will go towards the Rada Attenborough campaign, which is aiming to raise £20m to provide Rada with its first on-site student accommodation.
‘The performing arts exist to bring people together, not to break or keep them apart,’ added Hiddleston. ‘I hope the funds raised by the production will help Rada continue to provide a wider field of equal opportunity to train actors, stage managers and technical theatre artists, from every background, to a standard of excellence and professionalism. We need to keep the doors open for everyone.’
The Night Manager star is just one of many big-time actors whose career trajectory has zigzagged from theatre, then into Hollywood, and then back again. Movie actress Sienna Miller has moved between film and threatre throughout her career, and is currently starring in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in London's West End alongside Jack O'Connell. Similarly, Oscar-nominee and Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield - who is classically trained - is playing Prior Walter in Tony Kushner’s iconic play Angels in America at the National Theatre.
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