GDANSK, Poland: The curtain has gone up on a Shakespearean playhouse with an ultra-modern twist in Poland’s port city of Gdansk, built on the very spot where four centuries ago English actors performed masterpieces by the Great Bard, albeit on a more humble stage.

The new 22-million euro ($28-million) venue, which opened this weekend with a performance of Hamlet by the world-renowned Shakespeare’s Globe company, already boasts Britain’s Prince Charles among its most ardent fans.

Professor Jerzy Limon, a literary scholar, is the driving force behind the Gdansk Shakespeare Theater and the city’s annual Shakespeare festival, which has been drawing audiences since 1993.

“It’s a combination of a wonderful 400-year-old tradition and very modern, rather postmodern architecture,” said Limon of the venue.

The “jewel box” design by Venetian architect Renato Rizzi features a dark brick neo-Gothic style exterior and a retractable roof that can swing open to the sky like a two-winged draw-bridge.

A shimmering golden-hue dominates the wooden 600-seat interior, with its three tiers of balconies.

A stage comprising 56 moveable modules is versatile enough to accommodate the quintessentially Elizabethan “thrust stage,” surrounded by the audience on three sides; “theater in the round,” where the audience surrounds performers and the conventional “proscenium,” with all viewers facing the stage.

The cutting-edge venue was inspired by the drawing of a 17th century Gdansk artist detailing a humble wood-panel building used in the city for fencing and theater.

It featured an open-air courtyard, similar to London’s original Globe playhouse launched by Shakespeare himself in 1599.

Prince Charles has been among the most ardent supporters of Limon’s drive to revive the Shakespearean heritage of Gdansk.

In a special video address marking its weekend grand opening, the heir to the British throne deemed it “fitting” to raise the curtain 450 years after Shakespeare was born.

“There’s no other theater like it. It really exceeds expectations,” Neil Constable, chief executive of Shakespeare’s Globe theater, told AFP in Gdansk.

“We’re very jealous of Professor Limon’s new theater with the opening and closing roof and the opportunity to be able to perform in winter months in the way that we can’t with our outdoor theater,” he said of London’s Globe, a precise replica of Shakespeare’s very own venue.

Like Amsterdam, Gdansk was a bustling Hanseatic League trading port in the 15th to 17th centuries, hosting an affluent and ethnically diverse merchant class — including Englishmen and Scots — hungry for a good show on a night out.

Troupes of English actors began arriving on Baltic shores in the early 1600s and soon became so popular they were “followed by virgins who would travel after them from one town to the other like groupies today,” Limon told AFP.

“The theatrical impact of England in that period is comparable to that of British pop and rock music in the 21st century,” he added.

Limon’s dream of a new theater harking back to the days of Shakespeare was born after Poland shed communism in 1989. European Union entry in 2004 made it come true.

Brussels footed more than half bill for the theater with grants to the tune of 12 million euros ($15.4 million), with local and regional authorities covering the balance.