Ben Duke’s ‘The Last Hamlet’ comes to London’s Sadler’s Wells East: the threat that Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘will never be played again’

Ben Duke, artistic director of the award-winning company Lost Dog, returns to the London stage in November with “The Last Hamlet” at Sadler’s Wells East — a production that raises the provocative question: what if this were the last performance of Hamlet, after which Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy would never be played again, as BroadwayWorld reports.

“Hamlet carries a heavy responsibility for the ills of our time,” Duke says. He describes the Danish prince as depressed, violent and guilty of choosing postponement over action. After learning that his play has been cancelled — for circumstances beyond his control — Hamlet takes the stage one last time anyway: he has prepared new material and hopes to persuade the audience to let him stay. In Lost Dog’s hands, nothing is sacred: Shakespeare’s most iconic character becomes the starting point for a darkly comic exploration of existence, love, revenge and the stories we cannot escape — however hard we try.

The new production combines theatre, movement, text and music. Ben Duke himself plays Hamlet, while Miguel Altunaga — known from collaborations with Rambert, Akram Khan and Wayne McGregor — and Hannah Shepherd, winner of the 2025 UK national dance award for her role as Medea in Lost Dog’s “Ruination”, play the other characters. According to the company, the question that drove Duke to this project remains open: why do we keep performing Hamlet, and what does he reflect about the problems we live with today.

Lost Dog is a well-known dance-theatre company directed by Duke, whose work has previously been seen on Sadler’s Wells stages. “The Last Hamlet” was performed in Paris at the Théâtre des Abbesses from September 22 to 30 and is a co-production of Théâtre de la Ville–Paris, Sadler’s Wells, the Avignon Festival and the RomaEuropa Festival. In London, performances begin on November 4 at Sadler’s Wells East, the institution’s new space in the east of the British capital.