Benedict Cumberbatch urges Hamlet audiences to help Syrian refugees

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Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is giving a short, passionate speech each night at the curtain call after his performance in Hamlet at the Barbican, appealing for support for Syrian refugees.

There are over 11 million of them, he says, More than 200,000 have died making the perilious journey to Europe.

Cumberbatch speaks of a friend who has just come back from the island of Lesbos where she saw: "'Everywhere on the horizon there was nothing but boats and on the shoreline nothing but lifejackets' .. God knows the weather is getting worse what will come next".

"No one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land." he says, quoting from the poem Home by Somali poet Warsan Shire.

Cumberbatch has been particularly critical of the British government's decision to accept only 20,000 refugees over five years. He appeals for donations to Save the Children fund and urges the audience to write to their MPs.

See the film here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-fcZOZ4Uik