Hiran Abeysekera on bringing 'Hamlet' back to the National Theatre

Olivier Award winner Hiran Abeysekera takes on his most exciting challenge yet: playing Hamlet as part of Indhu Rubasingham’s first season at the National Theatre.

Summary

• Hamlet is being staged at the National for the first time in 15 years
• Hiran Abeysekera is best known for his Olivier Award-winning performance in Life of Pi
• Hamlet is part of Indhu Rubasingham's inaugural season as artistic director of the National

Hiran Abeysekera was given the chance of a lifetime when he was spotted by theatre director Willi Richards during a production of Equus in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2007. Recognising his talent, Richards helped Abeysekera find his way to the UK so that he could audition for drama school. A scholarship to RADA followed, as well as an agent and job opportunities, including with the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company. “I never dreamt I’d be performing Shakespeare in England. That was beyond dream stuff,” he says.

Fast forward 18 years, and Abeysekera is an Olivier Award winner, his breakthrough role being Pi Patel in Lolita Chakrabarti’s spectacular stage adaptation of Life of Pi, which had an incredible four year journey beginning in Sheffield, before transfers to the West End and Broadway. “Pi was amazing,” he says. “I learned a lot from it, the main thing being how to lead a big production.”

It is a learning curve that will serve him well in his latest role as the title character in the National Theatre’s production of Hamlet, directed by Robert Hastie and one of the shows to open Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural season at the venue. It is the first time Shakespeare’s tragedy has been performed at the National in 15 years, and if the trailer is anything to go by (Abeysekera sat in the Lyttleton Theatre, dressed in a ruff and shades, irreverently throwing around one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, “To be or not to be... innit”), it feels likely we’ll be getting a fresh take on this classic text.

Abeysekera joins a long list of great actors to tackle the part, including David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch, Derek Jacobi, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, and Maxine Peake. How does one drown out the pressure? “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when I figure it out,” he offers, candidly. “At the moment, I’m feeling all of those real feelings. Am I going to be good enough? Can I do this? guess it’s all part of the process.”

Abeysekera remembers theatre being a part of his life from a young age, after he was picked to join a drama troupe during detention by an “eccentric English teacher” who was new to the school and looking for kids with energy. His first credit was the rat in The Pied Piper, but Shakespeare parts soon followed in Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and even an early attempt at Hamlet.

“None of us really knew what we were saying, but we liked the rhythm of Shakespeare. Even for this bunch of boys in Sri Lanka, it was attractive to us,” he says. Abeysekera recalls reciting edited versions of Shakespeare’s plays with his company after rehearsals, walking down the street and rehearsing the Witches’ “Double, double toil and trouble” speech. “I remember, very vividly, the dogs barking at us, with the sun going down as we were running to catch the last bus. Fond memories,” he says.

In 2016, he was cast as Hamlet’s friend Horatio in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, opposite Paapa Essiedu as the lead. Has he spoken to Essiedu since the cast announcement? “He was one of the first people to text me. I’ll be picking his brain about the role.”

Four weeks into rehearsals, Abeysekera admits his preparation has become all-consuming. “It’s very strange how it infects one’s thoughts,” he muses. “Especially with the sort of journey Hamlet is on, talking about imposter syndrome or not being enough.” When he began to learn his lines, Abeysekera realised just how much the role was impacting him. “I was starting to become very melodramatic,” he laughs.

Some of that intensity could be attributed to Abeysekera’s time working with the late director Peter Brook, who was described by critic Michael Billington as “the great pathfinder of modern theatre”. He believes that after starring in Brook’s The Prisoner in Paris in 2018, his approach to learning lines changed.

“When I was younger, I’d like to show people the things that I can do, but here was a guy who was like, ‘I don’t want to see tricks. I want you to see something for real, so that I can believe it.’ I now paint those pictures in my head, and that’s how I learn lines. I’ll sit down and I’ll read the line, but as I’m reading it, I’ll try to imagine it. The clearer the picture is, the faster the lines go into my head.”

The National’s Hamlet is not the only one to be gracing our stages this autumn. Fat Ham, James Ijames’s Black, queer, Pulitzer Prize-winning take on Shakespeare’s tragedy, recently concluded its run in Stratford-upon-Avon, as has a Giles Terera-led Hamlet at the Minerva in Chichester. Abeysekera thinks it’s cool to see more diverse casting for these classic parts, recognising that “change needs to be made, and I’m benefiting from that change.”

Abeysekera reveals he struggled with the feeling of being different when he came to London. Growing up surrounded only by his family and friends in Sri Lanka, he remembers watching films like Star Wars on VHS and believing he could be those characters. “It was when I came here that I started realising I’m not Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker.” Abeysekera pauses. “The questions that I’m asked by people make me go, ‘Oh, I’m not. I’m different.’”

He is thrilled to see Rubasingham — who directed him in The Father and the Assassin at the National in 2023 — now leading the National Theatre as its artistic director. Significantly, she is the first woman and person of colour in the role. “We’re both Sri Lankan, so I love that she is running the theatre,” he says. “It’s amazing, and she’s a trailblazer going, ‘You can reach this place too.’ [...] She’s the best person in the country to run this place.”

Abeysekera recognises the impact of his work in the West End and on Broadway on Sri Lankans around the world. When Life of Pi transferred to Broadway, he says that Sri Lankans travelled far and wide to see him perform and tell him, “Thank you for representing.” NT Live has also opened up access for his community to watch his work from overseas, with his dad seeing him perform in the UK for the first time when Life of Pi was screened in Colombo. He says that he’s expecting quite a lot of Sri Lankans to make the trip for Hamlet too.

As for how he hopes the production is received, Abeysekera says: “It’s a story that everybody knows, but hopefully it’ll still keep them on the edge of their seats. Hopefully they will enjoy hearing lines that they know, but spoken with a different colour.”

Book Hamlet tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the October 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Hiran Abeysekera in Hamlet. (Photo by Sam Taylor). Inset: Geoffrey Streatfeild and Francesca Mills in Hamlet, and Abeysekera in Life of Pi, the RSC's Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu, and The Father and the Assassin. (Photos by Johan Persson, Manuel Harlan, and Marc Brenner)