Hamlet must be one of the most performed plays in the world. Rarely a season goes by without a theatre somewhere in the UK announcing a new production. Some avid theatregoers pride themselves on the number of Hamlets they have ‘collected’ over time. But for our Artistic Director Justin Audibert, who is currently in rehearsals for his production of the play (the first ever produced here at CFT, can you believe it?) this is not a surprise.

‘Hamlet is a piece that can be infinitely reinterpreted, and it feels like a play that talks particularly to each moment that you’re living through as a person, and that the world at large is going through. And I would say that is down to the sheer breadth of it thematically and all of the things that are in it: ranging from how you deal with grief, to what is the nature of being and the purpose of existence and life. Is there anything above or below us? These are such enormous questions and we as people just want to come back to exploring them over and over again.

‘Olivier Award-winner Giles Terera is tackling the part of Shakespeare’s tragic hero in this production and when you embark on a new version of Hamlet, so much of it is about the particular actor that is going to take on the lead role. It’s like the decathlon of acting. It stretches any actor because of the range of emotional tribulation he goes through. And just when you think ‘what more could there be’, he’s got to finish the play with the most almighty sword fight! So, it really is the Mount Olympus of acting challenges. No pressure, Giles!'

‘The action that takes place in this play feels to me like it should be a thriller. When I imagine being in the audience, you should be sitting there with a knot in your stomach that just keeps getting tighter and tighter. It never lulls; in every scene the events just crank up and crank up. And that’s part of the appeal of doing the show in the Minerva; you are seeing the whites of the actors’ eyes and you’re feeling how they’re feeling in that exact moment. That to me is incredibly exciting.

‘When I think about directing Shakespeare, I’m really thinking about a 14-year-old who has never seen any Shakespeare before. If you’d never been to the theatre before, at whatever age, and came across a really good production of Hamlet, I think it would blow your mind. There is something that is so powerful, spooky, supernatural, divine, whatever you want to call it – I think that could be really special.’

Hamlet  opens in the Minerva Theatre on 6 September for a limited four week run. Best availability is towards the end of the run.