The Play’s the Thing: Inside HAMLET at BAM with Hiran Abeysekera & Francesca Mills

To see or not to see? That's not the question that New York City audiences should be asking this spring, when Hamlet arrives in Brooklyn. Kicking off a new multi-year partnership between BAM and The National Theatre of Great Britain, National  Theatre Deputy Artistic Director Robert Hastie is bringing his contemporary Hamlet to US audiences at the Harvey Theater at BAM. 

Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera and Francesca Mills will return to center stage as Hamlet and Ophelia. 

"I would say that Robert Hastie rooms are the rooms where I've grown the most as an actor, because of the amount of trust he puts in his performers," Mills said of her director. "You're able to come to the rehearsal room and be like, 'I've got some pretty out there ideas and I'm not emotionally attached to them... but please can I use this hour to just try them out?' And he'll be like, 'Of course, let's go.' He allows you to go through that process so you never feel unfinished. You don't feel like there was a stone that you didn't turn."

Abeysekera is ready to return to one of Shakespeare's biggest roles. "I think [Hamlet] changed me, you know? Obviously, I have a major syndrome of thinking that I'm not enough, but then to always be trying to remember lines of a person who's also believing in that he's not enough and of being able to do it over and over again- learning it, then picturing it, having to believe it. It started to get to me hard," explained Abeysekera. "I think it's deeply carved in there and I'm glad for it. I think it changed me."

Both admit that they are excited to bring Shakespeare to a new audience. "I think there's nothing more beautiful in this world that we're in right now than a bunch of humans who don't know each other sat side by side and going through their own emotional experience," explained Mills. "Then top that with Shakespeare itself, where the person sat next to you could be having a completely different journey with one line than the next person... as the actors do! That's  the beauty of Shakespeare. That is why theater, for me, is the cherry on top of it all."

Hamlet will open at BAM's Harvey Theatre on May 4, 2026.

Photo Credit: Sam Taylor