After a 15 year hiatus, I am deeply grateful to return to the stage playing the role of Claudius in Boris Akunin's HAMLET. A VERSION, produced by Red Lab and Roust Theatre Company. This world premiere by the celebrated Georgian-born writer and dissident of Putin’s Russia, internationally famous for the cycle of fictional detective novels The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, re-engineers Shakespeare’s classic tragedy in an ingeniously innovative vein.

Set in a crumbling hierarchical empire, HAMLET. A VERSION shifts the usual focus from the iconic philosophical title character to the intrigue, opportunism, and political scheming of a burgeoning police state. This starkly realized new world order, insidiously ushered in by murderous and destabilizing tactics, provides a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’

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For more details and to purchase tickets, please visit akuninhamlet.com

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I originally trained as a classical actor at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England (founded by Sir Laurence Olivier in 1946), graduating in 1993. Theatre credits include: Theseus/Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Creon in Anouilh's Antigone, Banquo in Macbeth, the title role in Pericles, Macduff in Lady Macbeth, Don Gonzalo in Don Juan, The Traveller in The Queen and the Rebels, Dorante in The Feigned Inconstancy, Captain Plume in The Recruiting Officer, Moon in The Real Inspector Hound, Gayev in The Cherry Orchard, Marlowe in Christopher Marlowe: A Very Short Life, Judd in Bouncers, Jonas in Jonas Quick and the Temple of Time.

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ALL PHOTOS by JEREMY DANIEL