Raoul Bhaneja has been touring his production of Hamlet (solo) since 2006, and now it’s back again at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company for a weekend of incredible performances. I asked Raoul about his relationship with the show after performing it for so many years, what it’s like to edit down a text like Hamlet, and his travels around Canada with this show!

1. Could you please introduce yourself to my readers and talk a bit about your role with Hamlet (solo)?

I am an actor and musician who graduated from the National Theatre School almost thirty years ago (!) who has worked a lot in the theatre and extensively in television and film.  In the theatre the last decade or so I have focused more on my own projects with my company Hope and Hell Theatre Co. creating and performing in the Dora nominated musical Life, Death and The Blues and a production of Disgraced which we co produced with Mirvish for two separate runs.  

Hamlet (solo) is a one person version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “unplugged” in a way, focusing on the essential elements of the actor, the audience and the text.  

2. You first premiered this play in Toronto back in 2006. How has your relationship changed to the work in the intervening 18 years?

Hamlet is such a rich play it’s not hard to find yourself just lucky to be rediscovering it over and over again.  I took almost 10 years off performing it so I did have a long break.  Coming back to it has been very special and when we won Best Actor at the 2022 United Solo Festival in New York it gave us a boost that we should dive back in more fully and see if we still have something to offer with it.   Now being back at Soulpepper where Robert and I worked together in 2000 in the company together, it’s pretty amazing to find ourselves here… older and hopefully a little wiser.  

3. I saw that you took Hamlet (solo) to Inuvik, NWT. Could you please talk a bit about your experience with that production?

That was an amazing experience.  That night I performed in the sportsplex, the gym with a few black curtains and lights.  When I got to the interval I was worried as the audience had been silent… Ben Nind, who had been running the tour and was AD for the company that brought me up came back stage and I immediately apologized as they hadn’t really reacted much at all.   He laughed and said “are you kidding, they love it!”.  I said “But how is that possible, they weren’t reacting?”  He said, “They were listening.  When someone comes to this community to share a story, people listen.  They’ve been doing that for a very long time.”  He was right.  The second half of that show and the tour in general was pretty amazing.  What a special place.  This show as taken me to some very interesting places and that has been a pleasure indeed.  

4. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not only quite long, but has a plethora of textual options to choose from. Could you please talk to me a bit about the editing process for you with Hamlet (solo)?

Director Robert Ross Parker and I have been working  on it together from pretty much the start and we had a version that we settled on from the experience he had of directing a production and an experience I had acting as Laertes and The Player Queen in it.   Back in 2001 it was also available to download on line in a word document, providing you used The First Folio text.  So we literally started with that.  In fact it is still the template text we have today.  It was very easy to cut and paste!!!!  Believe it or not that helped us start to reduce and in some cases re introduce sections that exist outside the First Folio printing.  

5. I joke with my partner that I get jealous of folks who do solo versions of Shakespeare because they get ALL of the good speeches rather than the one or two per character in traditional casting. Hamlet has some of the most iconic speeches in Shakespeare; what’s it like navigating all of that recognizable text when it’s just you on stage?

I interviewed many actors who played Hamlet during the early days of my preparation for the role and they all said they would play the part again tomorrow if they could.  I realize now, all these years of navigating and revisiting not just the role of Hamlet but the entire play, that I am very lucky to be able to dive back in, over and over again.  In a new space, in a new place, at a different time of my life… it does continue to re inform the work and the end result.   When it comes to the FAMOUS speeches, now they are not so overwhelming as you really must approach them in the context of the story you are telling.  They have be great speeches on their own, but they are in the context of the play, just another step in the characters journey.  

I want to thank Raoul for taking the time to answer my questions! Hamlet (solo) only runs until May 25th, so get your tickets ASAP! For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/hamletsolo

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