With praise for his "Hamlet" with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016 still ringing in his ears — and the plum job of artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C. awaiting him in August — Simon Godwin is an undoubted darling of English theater these days.
So for Theatre Cocoon in Shibuya to land his services to re-stage the Bard's most famous tragedy in a new production with a Japanese cast is certainly quite a coup.
Yet for Godwin — whose "Hamlet," with the black British actor Paapa Essiedu leading a largely black cast, went on to wow American audiences last year — the worry must have been how to create another fresh version for Japan so soon after the last.