Hamlet is one of the most famous plays of all time, and every new production promises to become an event that demonstrates the high artistic aims of a theatre group while also making a statement about the world we live in. The latest staging of Shakespeare’s masterpiece on the Bulgarian stage is directed by the renowned theatre maker Stoyan Radev. He approaches the play’s timeless relevance by setting it outside any specific time or context. Instead, he presents it as a fairy tale—one whose exquisite language and wealth of themes resonate with contemporary issues.

The role of Hamlet is convincingly performed by the young and already acclaimed actor Yasen Atanasov, who immerses us in the play’s central question—”To be or not to be”—but even more so, “How to be” in times that seem to be “out of joint” and in need of being “set right” . Curious detail is that the ghost of Hamlet’s father is be played by the famous Bulgarian actor Atanas Atanasov, who in life is the father of Yassen Atanasov, but even more curious is that on the same stage two decades ago he himself  performed the role of the Danish prince.

Stoyan Radev is one of the most active theatre directors today, staging productions in leading theatres in Sofia. He is a recipient of the Askeer Theatre Award for Best Directing (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Cry of an Angel) and has been nominated multiple times for the Icarus National Award. He also directed the television series The Fourth Power, which was awarded by the Bulgarian Film Academy as well as the Association of European Television.