SERBIA

Watching Shakespeare performed during the Festival in half a dozen languages I don't understand has made one thing clear: the most successful productions have used physical expression and non-verbal modes of communication to connect the locally transformed plays to Globe audiences. That's not to say the spoken text in translation hasn't mattered. Far from it. One of the delights of this festival has been seeing the theatre globally transformed every day, as London's multicultural communities have turned out to watch Shakespeare in their home languages. But these spectators have also appreciated an emphasis on showing the story, since most are presumably unfamiliar with plays like 1 Henry VI. The powerful visual telegraphing of this early, multi-authored and eclectic drama of England's loss of its medieval French conquests and back-story to the Wars of the Roses was just one of many impressive aspects of Nikita Milivojević's brilliant National Theatre Belgrade production.

Peter Hall and John Barton's influential RSC production of The Wars of the Roses (1963–4) ditched the traditional staging of Shakespearean history as heraldic pageantry, reverence for kingship and martial heroism. Instead, they offered audiences a sceptically updated reading of Shakespearean politics shaped by brute force, political opportunism and self-destructive ambition. Milivojević's boldly conceptual staging was reminiscent of The Wars of the Roses in several ways. One was the continual use of a large central table. In Hall and Barton's production it served as historical council-board, political arena for contending egos and factions, and focal point for the beleaguered ship of state. Milivojević's table captured all these functions. But because it was multi-sectioned it also evolved theatrically as soundscape, metadramatic set, and natural and built environment: a polyfunctional stage within a stage.