Bard in translation

Yukio Ninagawa strides into the cafe at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, tall, ascetic-looking, dressed head to toe in black. 'Ask me anything,' he says, through his interpreter. 'Just don't ask me what the play means.'

It's a pleasingly light-hearted opener from Japan's most famous modern director, whose cerebral productions have established him as one of the world's most distinctive auteurs.

His work has played to rapturous English audiences for the past two decades: his seminal 1986 Samurai Macbeth, Ibsen's Peer Gynt starring Michael Sheen, his statuesque, Noh-influenced productions of two Yukio Mishima plays and 2003's peerless Pericles.

His career embodies both the Japanese obsession with Western theatre and our fascination with Japanese culture; two different traditions in which his work finds a common sympathy.

Most interesting of all is that Ninagawa doesn't speak English: his Japanese productions carry surtitles and one can only imagine the rehearsal process in the ones that use English actors.

Hamlet, his latest effort starring Michael Maloney, is one such example and the second time in recent years that Ninagawa has used an entirely English cast.

Given the last one was 1999's critically derided King Lear, starring Nigel Hawthorne, it's tempting to ask why Ninagawa persists in these intercontinental collaborations.

'Challenges are my thing,' he says slowly. And, for his part, he provides his own challenges to an English cast.

His British producer Thelma Holt describes Ninagawa's insistence on theatre that fully integrates image, movement, sound and text:

'He arrives at the beginning of rehearsals with the production entirely conceived, even down to the lighting requirements. Yet he can't articulate how he arrived at his particular vision for the play and needs the rehearsal process to work that out. It can be very difficult.'