EXCLUSIVE 'Frankly ridiculous' trigger warning for Shakespeare's Hamlet: National Theatre cautions viewers over death, grief and madness

Daily Mail​

30-04-2025

To warn or not to warn. That is the question that faced the National Theatre.
Ticket buyers attending its upcoming production of Shakespeare's Hamlet are advised that the play contains themes of death, grief, suicide, madness and coercive behaviour.
The play, a cornerstone of English literature and widely taught in schools, ends with a fatal duel that sees most of the principal characters - including the prince himself - dead by the final curtain.
The production, which opens in September as part of Indhu Rubasingham's inaugural season as artistic director, stars Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera as the Danish prince.
Alongside casting announcements, the theatre has slapped the production with a trigger warning, stating: 'This production contains themes of grief and death, including suicide and the loss of a parent, depictions of madness, violence, and coercive behaviour.'
The warning has prompted raised eyebrows among some theatre-goers and commentators, who questioned whether audiences need advance notice that a four-hundred-year-old tragedy contains tragic elements.
Roy Schwartz, a historian and author, told the Mail: 'A trigger warning is meant to alert that something contains potentially distressing material. It's gratuitous to include it in something that's well-known to have mature subject matter, and it's frankly ridiculous to include it in a classic like Hamlet. For that matter, why not have a trigger warning in every history book? Every Bible and Sunday sermon?
'Coddling audiences against reality only serves to infantilise culture. A trigger warning is fair when the audience might not expect something 'triggering,' not in the most famous play in history.'
Writer Simon Evans said: 'Trigger warnings are tiresome, infantilising and ultimately counterproductive as myriad research and indeed robust common sense and experience tells us. But to attach one to one of the supreme works of art in the western canon, a play that contains the single most quoted lines in the language, let alone on the subject of 'self-slaughter', is risible in the extreme.
'Let all theatres bookshops and cinemas carry a single 'trigger warning' henceforth. 'Take Heed! - all human life is here. Proceed at your own peril''.
The National Theatre's production runs at the Lyttelton from September 25, with a press night on October 2 and a global NT Live broadcast to follow.
This comes amid news that Stormzy is set to front a new diversity initiative at the National Theatre, having signed on to lead a 'top secret' project at the iconic South Bank venue.
The Croydon-born grime artist, real name Michael Omari Owuo Jr, has been scouted by the new National Theatre boss as she looks to modernise and diversify its creative output.
As the South Bank venue's first female and ethnic minority artistic director, Ms Rubasingham has announced plans to stage rap adaptations of classic Greek tragedy
As the South Bank venue's first female and ethnic minority artistic director, Ms Rubasingham has announced plans to stage rap adaptations of classic Greek tragedy.
The subversive move is part of a wider aim to build an international audience through the National Theatre's online streaming platform, National Theatre At Home.
The £9.99 per month platform - originally launched in 2020 - will give subscribers the opportunity to watch theatrical productions from the comfort of home and create what insiders hope will be a 'Netflix for theatre'.
Discussing the move towards a more modernist theatre on Tuesday, Kate Varah, the National Theatre's executive director, said plans to expand its streaming service would help attract audiences 'not just in our country, but in 184 countries around the world'.
She said: 'It's no longer just about what happens here on the South Bank, the National Theatre is now a global theatre with an audience of 28 million per year.'