In Celebration of the Master’s 80th Birthday
Yukio Ninagawa’s Hamlet Will Be Born Again!

Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies, has been praised as a world classic with its plots intertwined with insanity, disguise, betrayal and incest as well as its philosophical dialectics of morality and ethics. It has thus become one of the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature.

Yukio Ninagawa has been consistently re-interpreting Shakespeare’s plays with the combination of the west and the east elements, producing works unique for their creativity and oriental aesthetics. After the successful production of Medea in Taiwan in 1993, Yukio Ninagawa will visit Taiwan again after 22 years, and present Hamlet for the eighth time. This product casts Tatsuya Fujiwara, who was discovered by Yukio Ninagawa at the age of 15 and became the youngest Hamlet in the history of Japanese theater in 2003. With his performance in Hamlet, he won numerous awards in Japan that year and was thus acclaimed as an unprecedented talent bearing the hope of Japanese theater for the next 30 years. Also in the cast are Hikari Mitsushima, who has been nominated for the Japan Academy Prize for three years in row, Ran Ohtori, the legendary former top-star of Takarazuka Revue, Hira Mikijiro, who received the highest praise in many countries with Ninagawa productions. With the rebirth of Hamlet, it is expected to create a new wave of enthusiasm for this troubled Prince of Denmark.