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'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

Usually, you see this play as a guy who can't make up his mind, but our version is more of a revenge thriller than a man who is pontificating what he should do next. I've never seen a 'Hamlet' this big, this exciting, with this many cast members; it's quite a spectacle.

Hamlet is a little daunting.

If you were to ask everyone what 'Hamlet' was about, they might say, "It's about a prince, and he says, 'To be or not to be.'"

'Hamlet' is obviously a role a lot of actors want to portray or be involved with in some way and that I'd like to be involved in.

If you look at a painting that you love by one of the great masters, every time you go back to it, you see something different - a different attitude or brushstroke. 'Hamlet' is like an entire gallery of old masters.

I'd not really ever expected to play anything like 'Hamlet.' I hadn't seen myself as a natural Hamlet, whatever a natural Hamlet is, and I quickly realised there is no such thing.

I started to realise that it wasn't for me. Perhaps I didn't have to give my Hamlet before I died, that the world might be an OK place without my Hamlet, in fact.

You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.