... Peter Stein chose to create a Russian poetic equivalent to the original Shakespearean text by composing a new literary adaptation based on already existing translations. He addressed his production of Hamlet mainly to the young Russians, who were supposed to listen to the text – to its every word and sentence, in order to perceive it in its complicated semantic and poetic beauty and originality. In his search for the truest Russian version of the English masterpiece, Stein looked at all major translations. ... So the new redaction of Russian Hamlet contained extracts from different texts published in the late 19th and 20th century.

In the actual performance, this textural mixture created a very postmodernist-like heteroglossia of different poetic voices, each representing its time, artistic style and aesthetic priorities; nevertheless, Stein succeeded. He made his public listen to these literary interrelations (which were uncomfortable for perception) very attentively, making the verbal component of the theatrical semiotic system dominant, recovering fresh, unexpected, semantically and intonationally unaffected sound of the Shakespearean word, as if the play had been written the day before. In fact, he created a situation when the beauty of the English text radiated through the linguistic texture of another language, Russian. The rhythmical arrangement of Russian patterns helped to recreate the effect of the rough, highly unsentimental English text. Using an empty theater-in-the-round and rejecting nearly any visual images, Stein revealed the poetic beauty of Hamlet not by utilizing another semiotic system ... but by employing the same semiotic system – language – taken in the situation of a theatrical performance.

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Peter Stein's production of Hamlet in 1998 offered another version of the same complex image of the leading character, which appeared not only as a historical echo to the 1911's production but also as an echo of today's search of the post-Soviet Russian cultural consciousness, for new ideals and gods. Peter Stein acknowledged Shakespeare to be "none's," leaving the performance as open as possible for any reading or interpretation. He recognized Hamlet to be the hero of every coming new generation, which today has neither national, cultural, or specific geographical address but, like many previous ones, lives through the tragedy of betrayed trust, bumping into the cynicism of the elders.

The conflict between Hamlet and Gertrude, the son and the mother, received a special emphasis, which echoed another conflict of generations depicted in Stein's version of Aeschylus' Oresteia, restaged in Moscow in 1994, with Yevgeny Mironov as Orestes. As Mironov's Orestes came to judge and kill his mother and then suffered from the guilty consciousness represented by the image of Furies, so his very young Hamlet – almost a boy – came to Denmark for revenge. This quiet and cold Hamlet, who endlessly listened to his inner world, as if the entire outer world with all it happiness and grief was contained within his consciousness, emotionally exploded just once. His passionate "goodbye" kiss was addressed not to Ophelia but to his mother, whose hasty wedding caused him to suffer in the company of the invisible Furies of mistrust and disbelief, whom he tried to drive away with titanic effort of thought. Thus, one of the artistic layers making up the mosaic image of Mironov's Hamlet was the layer of classical Greek tragedy.

Due to both actors' impressionistic technique and linguistic discord of the literary text, Hamlet of 1998 had a fragmentary postmodernist nature consisting of different cultural and theatrical implications. The most obvious one was the reference to our contemporary, an ordinary guy playing saxophone, which alluded to Vladimir Vysotsky's Hamlet with the guitar in the 1971 production speaking for the oppressed generation, for the parents of those who came to watch Hamlet in 1998.

Only at the very end of the performance did Mironov's image acquire his last but probably the most important trait. Mironov's Hamlet emerged on the stage-turned-boxing-ring dressed in a white silk shirt and straight black pants, as a romantic hero would have appeared. He fenced cheerfully, killed with sorrow, and died widely stretching out his hands, as if preparing to ascend the Cross.

Stanislavsky once compared Hamlet to Jesus, who "came to purify the world". The only difference to Stanislavsky's vision of "the purifier" was that "today's Jesus" would not be able to purify anything. The arrival of Fortinbras armed with a machine gun and looking like a mercenary had its own historical, political and theatrical references, which on the symbolic level simply reinforced the atmosphere of the approaching unknown.

This, the beauty of the image of Hamlet in the performance closing the century, similarly to the performance opening this era, manifested itself in a mixture of cultural references – from suffering intellectuals, revolutionaries of thought, to Jesus Christ.

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