Other up-to-the-minute touches included the trappings that serve the court and the hangers-on at Elsinore: boom boxes, microphones, semi-automatic machine guns and a piano, which Hamlet himself took to playing during opportune moments.

The Cameri's production of Hamlet has already represented Israel at the International Shakespeare Festival in Gdansk Poland (2005) and at the International Shakespeare Festival in Bucharest, Romania (2006).

The Jerusalem Post says, "'Hamlet' is the prince in Israel's theater world," while Plays International UK says: "This production is undoubtedly the best thing the Israeli theater has seen in many years."

The Cast

Omri Nitzan, the artistic director of the Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv, one of Israel's most prestigious theater companies, has transformed Shakespeare's 400-year-old text into a modern, muscular hit. Nitzan's 2005 production won accolades and audiences – running for more than 400 performances - throughout Israel and at international festivals in Poland and Romania.

Omri Nitzan, artistic director of the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv

The youthful cast members are closer to teenagers than adults in Nitzan's eyes, who first became besotted with the Shakespearean tragedy as a young man. "When I was 16 or 17, I remember going around with Hamlet, which I carried in my pocket. As a young boy facing the pains of growing up, I just found a close linkage between my youth and Hamlet.

The Hebrew translation of the Bard's classic text by T. Carmi with editing by Dan Almagor, cuts the four-plus hours to about two and a half, and draws on the historical legacy of the language.

"Hebrew in many ways is more archaic and ancient than any Elizabethan verse," the director says. "The great pleasure of translating Shakespeare into Hebrew, for example, is to use all the rich layers: You have the biblical Hebrew, you have the sources - talmudic Hebrew - and the beginning of the Hebrew revival 100 years ago."