US President Barack Obama has begun his final day in London by touring a theatre dedicated to the work of William Shakespeare.
Saturday marks the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death and he is being celebrated throughout the UK.
The Globe theatre is a replica of the circular, open-air playhouse that Shakespeare designed in 1599.
Mr Obama watched a brief performance of a portion of Hamlet, including the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy. The scenes were performed by actors from a company of 16, who embarked on a two-year world tour in 2014 playing to more than 100,000 people in 197 countries. Obama described the performance as “wonderful”. During the scenes, Mr Obama stood in the open-air theatre watching intently and was seen swaying back and forth on his feet to the music. As the US President toured the theatre, he spent several minutes looking at the structure and asking questions about the seating and performances.
Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, said: “At the end of an extraordinary journey all around the world, it is great to return home to the Globe, and to be able to perform a few scenes and to be welcomed back by President Barack Obama. “The spirit of ‘Yes we can’ has informed the entire tour, and it’s an honour to meet the man who coined the phrase, and who exemplifies its spirit.”
The US President made the trip before a visit to London’s Royal Horticultural Halls where he made a speech and took questions from the audience. Mr Obama urged young people to “reject pessimism and cynicism” and “know that progress is possible and problems can be solved”.
David Tennant will host a BBC celebration on Saturday night live from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The event will be attended by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Performers at Shakespeare Live – which begins on BBC Two at 20:30 BST – will include Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Helen Mirren and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Other names on the bill include Rory Kinnear, Meera Syal, Joseph Fiennes, David Suchet, Simon Russell Beale, Roger Allam, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Harriet Walter, John Lithgow, Anne-Marie Duff and the cast of Horrible Histories.
As well as theatrical performances, the show will feature hip-hop, blues, jazz, opera and classical music that has been inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. Throughout the day on Saturday, Shakespeare’s Globe will be screening short films of every one of Shakespeare’s 37 plays on giant screens along the banks of the Thames, between Tower Bridge and Westminster. The films feature actors delivering their lines in the locations where the plays are set – such as Cleopatra in Egypt, Julius Caesar in the Roman Forum and Hamlet at Elsinore.
Among the star names involved in the project, entitled The Complete Walk, are Gemma Arterton, Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, James Norton, Zawe Ashton and Peter Capaldi. Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s artistic director, who will stand down on Sunday, revealed on Friday that the short films had just all been given a “U” classification apart from one film, Pericles, which is a PG.
“That astonished us, we thought some of the others might be closer to the margins, so we’ll have to put up signs around that saying it needs parental guidance,” Mr Dromgoole said. The weekend will also see the return of the Globe’s worldwide tour of Hamlet, which has spent the last two years travelling to almost every country in the world. On Saturday afternoon, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the playwright was born. They will visit the site of the playwright’s adult home for 19 years – now being transformed into a tourist attraction called Shakespeare’s New Place, and due to open to the public in July. They will also go to see his grave, situated at Holy Trinity Church.
And in the evening the royal couple will attend Shakespeare Live, which is being broadcast from Stratford-upon-Avon. BBC Radio 3 will also be broadcasting a weekend of Shakespeare-inspired music and performance live from the Bard’s hometown. And some of Shakespeare’s best known characters – including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and King Lear – will be featuring along a stretch of the River Thames in London.
Elsewhere, leading arts organisations across the UK will make available performances, analysis and talks.
All material will be streamed on Shakespeare Day Live, a digital pop-up channel which kicks off Shakespeare Lives, a six month online festival.
