"Hamlet" returns to Shakespeare's Globe theater after two-year world tour

A touring production of "Hamlet" has returned to its home at Shakespeare's Globe theater in London, two years after setting out on a world tour.

The two-year-long world tour of Hamlet set out on April 23, 2014, the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth.

The aim was to visit every country in the world with a 16-strong company of performers and technicians.

The company covered more than 300,000 km and performed 293 performances at 202 venues in about 190 countries.

The company returned to its London Southbank home on Friday, and the final four performances of the tour will be given at Shakespeare's Globe on Friday and Saturday.

The idea was born from the links made during the "Globe to Globe" festival in 2012 when theater companies from around the world performed at Shakespeare's Globe as part of celebrations for the London Olympics.

Tom Bird, the Hamlet producer, told Xinhua that these companies then invited Shakespeare's Globe to perform in their countries.

"We received a lot of invitations from theater companies who had visited us to come back and play in their own theaters. We realized we were in a unique position of possibly being able to tour a single production to every country in the world."

The company set forth in April 2014 on a square-rigged sailing vessel for Amsterdam, where the first overseas performance took place, and it was on the road for the next two years.

"These people have been on a most extraordinary journey, playing in the most diverse range of venues imaginable," said Bird.

The final overseas performance was at Elsinore Castle in Denmark, the setting of Hamlet, in front of the present Queen of Denmark.

For some of the 16-strong crew, the tour took them to their homeland, which had great meaning for them.

Jennifer Leong, who played Ophelia, was particularly moved by the performance in her home city of Hong Kong.

Leong said: "We went to Hong Kong to perform at the Academy of Performing Arts, which is a stage I have seen many times growing up. So it was beyond surreal to be on that stage, on the other side, and also to welcome the audience in Cantonese, which I grew up speaking."

For all of us, it means a lot when we went to places where we had family and friends, or grew up or were students; it just brought things full circle for me," Leong added.

The largest audience was in Sudan, where the company performed in front of 3,500 people, with another 1,500 outside trying to get in. The smallest audience was 30, on the Western Pacific island of Palau.

However, the tour was not without its dangers, and it had to avoid countries where war or conflict posed a danger to the security of company members.

In these cases, the company performed to audiences in refugee camps, including Syrian refugees in the Zaatari Camp in Jordan, Yemeni refugees at the Markazi Camp in Djibouti, and Central African Republic refugees in Mandjou, Cameroon. Endit