Actors from Shakespeare’s Globe in London rehearse a fight scene before a performance of Hamlet at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema yesterday, one of the last stops on a two-year tour attempting to visit every country on earth. Photos: Matthew Mirabelli.Actors from Shakespeare’s Globe in London rehearse a fight scene before a performance of Hamlet at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema yesterday, one of the last stops on a two-year tour attempting to visit every country on earth. Photos: Matthew Mirabelli.

Actors from the Globe theatre in London performed in Malta yesterday on one of the last stops of an unprecedented two-year Globe-to-Globe tour, taking William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to every country on earth.

The Maltese leg of their journey actually hit two birds with one stone: as the company was unable to visit nearby Libya due to the current political situation, they arranged instead for a number of Libyan migrants to attend the show at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema free of charge.

This is not the first time the Globe-to-Globe project has engaged with the migration crisis as a way of bringing its ground-breaking production to the people of countries who would otherwise be excluded because of war or instability.

Unable to travel to Syria, they performed in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan; instead of visiting the Central African Republic, they performed to a large migrant community from that country in neighbouring Cameroon.

Last week, the troupe travelled to the makeshift camp known as the Jungle in Calais, France.

Here they shared Shakespeare’s story of indecision, life and death to refugees whose own stories resonated strongly with the play.

Actor Beruce Khan, who plays Laertes, Rosencrantz and a number of other roles in the production, told the Times of Malta the decision to take the play to such extreme situations had served to highlight its universality.

“Shakespeare’s stories are very human, and they do reflect our life and what’s happening today – in a good and sometimes in a bad way,” he said.

Hamlet being performed at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema yesterday.Hamlet being performed at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema yesterday.

Even though many of the refugees they played to didn’t speak the language – they followed along a printed synopsis – Mr Khan said they were among the most receptive audiences the troupe encountered.

“Many were desperate to come and speak to us after the show and tell us of their own experiences in theatre,” he recalled. “A group of Syrian actors came up to us at the Zaatari camp, and it was just a bunch of actors talking to each other about their experiences – even in such an unusual setting.”

Moreover, with different audiences and different cultures, different lines took on new meaning. Among refugees, Mr Khan said, it was a line by Horatio at the end of the play where he speaks of his need to tell his story, to share the truth of what had happened. “That kind of echoes what they’ve been through,” he said.

Performing in Ukraine the night before the tumultuous 2014 election, with current president Petro Poroshenko in the front row, what stood out – in the midst of the Crimean crisis – was a line by Fortinbras, about going to gain a “little patch of ground that hath no profit but the name”.

“A lot of the different aspects of the play have become relevant in different cultures: sometimes it’s religion, sometimes it’s family,” Mr Khan said.

“One time we were performing in the Caribbean, and in the closet scene, when Hamlet confronts his mother about killing his father, a woman stood up and yelled: ‘How can you speak to your mother like that?’”

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