It''s a long way from any other theater you may usually attend. A very long way. The FEST Theater of Drama and Comedy is located in the suburb of Mytishchi, 20 minutes by car from the end-of-the-line Medvedkovo stop in northeastern Moscow.

But for the adventurous, it might be worth the trip. I, for one, found Leonid Krasnov''s production of "Poor Hamlet: Shakespearean Passions in Expectation of an Audience" to be more than just the routine, far-out experiment. This is a show that presents the inner thoughts and states of an actor who is preparing to play Hamlet, but perhaps never does. At least when he hears the final call for the performance to begin, he slips out in his street clothes and we never see him again, even for the curtain calls of the show we have just withnessed.

The spectators, and the stagehands, are scattered around the stage, facing the curtain blocking off the hall and looking down on a sleeping figure. This is the Actor (Farit Khalyapov) who is experiencing premiere jitters. As he sleeps, we hear his dreams - the voices of some great 20th-century Hamlets: Gielgud, Olivier, Smoktunovsky and Vysotsky. Even when the actor comes to, we hear only his thoughts - the measured, recorded sounds of him reciting his lines - as he busies himself with putting on his make-up, donning his costume and frittering away the last moments until curtaln time. The only time the Actor bursts into voiceis when he begins to recite the "to be or not to be" monologue, but he becomes so tangled up in finding the right intonation, he can get no further than those first words.

Watching a mute actor working to a prerecorded voice for the duration of a 75 minute performance can be taxing. But Krasnov provides a wealth of visual and other stimuli to keep us focused on the actor''s plight. The burning candles distributed to each spectator keep us mindful of the mystery unfolding before us, while the actor''s costume rack that is revealed to be a cross reminds us that this is a role that can drive the weak to their grave.