Vending-machine Hamlet

Not that he doesn't aim to get a few laughs in his productions. In "Romeo and Juliet," for example, he opens a special set to reveal the masquerade dance, complete with miniature disco ball. "He kind of winks at the audience," Ms. Sullivan says.

For the production of "Hamlet," he is trying something a little different. In the past, people were handed toy binoculars to watch the dramatic events unfold over the course of 40 minutes or so on a tabletop or ironing board. But now he's working with video cameras and TV monitors to magnify the action on a series of small sets, some of which are obscured from view. It means his audience can expand beyond 15 or 25 people up to the 190 people who can fit in a venue he'll play in Seattle in May. It also means the performances are more complicated.

On opening night in New York, Weinstein was still working out the kinks with the new show - such as keeping track of each figure's position among different sets as he voices the lines.

But his unusual technique, and incorporation of his own body into the work (he puts the Hamlet ninja in his opened mouth, for example, to signal the arrival of the ghost of Hamlet's father) is not lost on the audience. Nor is the entertainment value of being surprised by what figures and everyday objects he'll unveil next.

"I thought it was completely charming," says Cheryl Henson, daughter of late puppeteer Jim Henson, who attended the first night. "He's referencing all the classic moments and getting the whole story across. But I think that the show probably is stronger for people who are somewhat familiar with the text already and are interested in seeing a playoff of it."

Ms. Henson is president of the Jim Henson Foundation, which provided a grant to PS122 to present Weinstein's work.

"He really is a favorite of a lot of the people who enjoy object theater," she says. "A lot of people like to call it object theater, instead of puppetry, particularly when it's done like this, where objects are playing the parts."

When the actors are plastic, rather than human, it allows people to hear the language of the play in a new way, says Weinstein.

Instead of audiences being distracted by the actors - is he too short to be Hamlet, are his clothes appropriate - they can concentrate on what's being said. But it does require people to accept the conceit of his world, that a toy is a character.

Some people don't.

"I've had audiences like that," admits Weinstein. "We've had reviews where people said, 'He seems to be very engaged in what he was doing, but I don't have any notion of what that was.' "

He chose to take on the high-tech challenge of his latest show because he wondered if it was possible to do, much in the same way he wondered if he could pull off that first production of "Macbeth" with inch-high plastic ninjas in FringeNYC.

Back then, he thought, "I'll do this show for a month, and then I'll go back to being an actor. It'll be fun," he explains. "But to my surprise and delight, it really took off. And we've been doing it ever since."

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