A popular avant-garde version of Shakespeare's classic "Hamlet" will be on stage again next week after its premiere 18 years ago.

In 1990, the play, directed by Lin Zhaohua, a leading artist of Chinese avant-garde theater, gained huge popularity and roused great controversy in China for its unique perspective and performance.

In the play, the role of Hamlet was divided among different actors, switching from time to time. So did other characters. For instance, Pu Cunxi, the hero, was Hamlet sometimes and the King Claudius for a while.

"I want to demonstrate the concept of 'everybody is Hamlet'," said the 72-year-old director during a rehearsal here Saturday, "All characters shared elements of good and evil, honesty and falsehood. I mean to blur morality difference in apparently opposed characters."

The stage design was quite contemporary. The King and Queen were seated on a barber's chair. A grave maker made a phone call to his colleagues. Ceiling fans are "swords" used by Hamlet.

Actors were not wearing costumes but their own clothes.

"I want to draw Hamlet closer to us as our brother and one of us, instead of making him an alien noble," Lin said. "For me, he is not a prince revenging for justice, nor a humanism hero, but part of us. Facing your truly ego is the most positive, bravest and heroic posture that modern people can have."

The play was not apparently different from the edition 18 years ago except for the actors, Lin said.

Hamlet is played mostly by Pu Cunxin, a renowned actor who played leading roles in several famous Chinese dramas such as "Thunderstorm," "Teahouse" and "The Three Sisters, Waiting for Godot". He was the only one left of all actors in the play's premiere.

King Claudius and Queen Gertrude are played respectively by Zhou Mingshan and Chen Jin, both veterans, while Ophelia go to Gao Yuanyuan, a young starlet who played in several films.

Lin was one of the pioneers of Experimental Theatre Movement that brought Chinese theater into its modernistic stage by introducing non-illusionistic style and techniques in the 1980s and 1990s.

The play will be staged in Beijing from Oct. 21 to 25, in Shanghai from Oct. 27 to 28 and in Shenzhen from Nov. 6 to 8.

(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2008)