Hiran Abeysekera makes history as Hamlet at the National Theatre

British Asian parents should consider taking their children to see Hamlet at the National Theatre, especially if they are studying one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies at school.

This is quite a moment in the evolution of the British Asian community because the Sri Lankanorigin actor Hiran Abeysekera has been cast as the Prince of Denmark.

He was born in Colombo in 1985 and grew up in the shadow of the civil war in Sri Lanka before coming to study at RADA in 2007.

He will be familiar to Eastern Eye readers because he was given an ACTA (Arts, Culture & Theatre Award) in 2023 for playing the lead in the stage adaptation of Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s tale of a boy cast at sea with a tiger. The role won him an Olivier as well.

He also played Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, in The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre. His mother, Aai, was played by Ayesha Dharker who won an ACTA for her role in 2023.

Alistair Petrie (Claudius) and Ayesha Dharker (Gertrude) Sam Taylor

Dharker is in Hamlet as well, once again playing his mother, this time as Gertrude, the queen who has married her brother-in-law, Claudius (Alastair Petrie), after he has murdered of her husband.

Many of Britain’s greatest actors have played Hamlet, especially at the National. But the play is performed widely in India, too. The joke is that if Shakespeare had been alive today, he would be a Bollywood scriptwriter given his love for melodrama.

Many Eastern Eye readers will have seen Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptations of three Shakespeare tragedies. In fact, in 2013, he came to the India Club in The Strand to explain his passion for Shakespeare to members of the Indian Journalists’ Association.

Hamlet, in particular, appealed to him. It is a tragedy, he said, about the Prince of Denmark who is commanded by his father’s ghost to avenge his murder by killing his uncle, Claudius, who has usurped the throne and married Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet feigns madness to investigate, but his erratic behaviour leads to accidental murder, the suicide of his girlfriend Ophelia, and eventually, a fatal duel with her brother, Laertes. Ultimately, the plot results in the deaths of Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet himself.

Hiran Abeysekera (Hamlet) and Tessa Wong (Horatio) Sam Taylor

Bhardwaj based his 2003 hit Maqbool on Macbeth and returned with Omkara in 2006 as his adaptation of Othello. But it was his third film, Haider, his adaptation of Hamlet in 2014, which proved the most controversial.

He set it against the backdrop of the armed insurgency in Kashmir in the 1990s. He cast Shahid Kapoor as Hamlet, Shraddha Kapoor as Ophelia, Tabu as Gertrude and Kay Kay Menon is Claudius.

Haider is a poet who returns to Kashmir at the height of the insurgency to find that his father has disappeared and his mother is in a new relationship with his uncle. The film revolves around Shahid’s character who embarks on a dangerous journey to find his father and ends up getting dragged into the politics of the state. The film sparked controversy for its portrayal of human rights abuses and its critical perspective on the situation in Kashmir, leading to public debate and a #BoycottHaider campaign.

The new production at the National Theatre, is directed by Robert Hastie. He is also its deputy artistic director. The opening scene when Hamlet’s father appears as a ghost in the eerie darkness, picked out intermittently with a torchlight, is superbly done. The lush palace scenes are also vividly royal, and the play within a play, imitating the murder that has taken place in reality, is very dramatic.

Francesca Mills (Ophelia) and Hiran Abeysekera Sam Taylor

Abeysekera plays Hamlet unlike any of the other great actors who have preceded him in the role. He speaks rapidly, does not linger over the lines and behaves like a hyperactive youth who whoops when confronted by his father’s ghost. Physically, Abeysekera is much smaller than other men on stage, so he has to play Hamlet rather differently from others who have gone before him.

But then Ophelia is played by Francesca Mills, who was born with the genetic disorder achondroplasia, a common form of dwarfism.

For the legendary actors from the past, Hamlet was a rite of passage.

It’s worth recalling Peter O’Toole (1963) played Hamlet in the National Theatre’s very first production, which was directed by Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic.

Albert Finney (1975) took on the role in the production, directed by Peter Hall. that opened the new National Theatre building on the South Bank.

Daniel Day-Lewis (1989) starred in a production directed by Richard Eyre in the Olivier Theatre. This production became famous when Day-Lewis left the stage mid-performance, reportedly experiencing a mental breakdown related to the ghost scene and the death of his own father, and was replaced by his understudy, Jeremy Northam.

Simon Russell Beale (2000) played the role in a production directed by John Caird in the Lyttelton Theatre.

Rory Kinnear (2010) gave a highly praised performance in the Olivier Theatre, directed by Nicholas Hytner.

Hamlet has been played elsewhere by Alex Jennings (1997), Samuel West (2001), Toby Stephens (2004) and David Tennant (2008).

And now we have Abeysekera in the Lyttelton Theatre at the National. Reviews have been mixed but it is still worth catching the play because it marks a moment in British Asian history. It may be years before there is another British Asian playing Hamlet at the National Theatre.

Debbie Gilpin at BroadwayWorld, a theatre news website based in New York, enthused: “This is exactly the kind of Hamlet you would hope to see at The National Theatre. Challenging, entertaining, and compelling, it takes one of the most well-known plays in the English language and shows us something new.”

Tom Glenister (Laertes), Alistair Petrie (Claudius), Mary Higgins (Osric), Hiran Abeysekera (Hamlet) and Noel White (Bernardo) in Hamlet at the National Theatre.

She liked Abeysekera’s hyperactive approach to the part: “We recognise now that grief can manifest itself in many different ways, so our titular prince doesn’t have to mope around and be visibly melancholic throughout the play; he can outwardly appear to be coping, whilst his interior monologue says all sorts of things. As an audience we are given an insight into this via his soliloquies, which almost spill out of him at times – Hiran Abeysekera’s Hamlet’s mind is working at 100mph as it tries to process everything that’s going on around him. There’s a ring of truth to this, as your mouth can often struggle to keep up with your brain in times of stress.”

Hamlet runs until 22 November 2025 at the Lyttelton Theatre, with a National Theatre Live cinema broadcast scheduled for 22 January 2026.