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Henry IV Part 2 by Elkafka Espacio Teatral, Argentina. Performed in Spanish. (C) Ellie Kurttz

The rejection of Falstaff appears, here, not just good politics, but a generally good and necessary idea…

Henry IV Part 1 by Compania Nacional de Teatro, Mexico performed in Spanish (C) Ellie Kurttz

This company received no less than four curtain calls. Amazing. So the question is simply: how did they do it?

Henry VI Part 3 by National Theatre of Bitola performed in Macedonian (C) Marc Brenner

Henry VI Part Three depicts the brutality and suffering of civil war as a series of battles and death scenes, punctuated by blasted or ironised hopes of peace….

Henry VI Part 2 by National Theatre of Albania, in Albanian (C) Marc Brenner

Trimming of the original text meant that Cade’s compressed narrative shifted quickly into the play’s civil war phase, dominated by a splendidly forceful and splenetic Duke of York (Vasjan Lami) …

Henry VI Part 1 by National Theatre Belgrade in Assoc. Laza Kostic Fun in Serbian (C) Marc Brenner

Watching Shakespeare performed in half a dozen languages I don’t understand has made at least one thing clear: the most successful productions have used physical and non-verbal modes of expression to make the plays connect with Globe audiences…

The Two Gentlemen of Verona by Two Gents Productions in Shona (C) Ellie Kurttz

With a thud the trapdoor on the Globe stage was flung open and a head appeared…

Macbeth performed by Teatr im. Kochanowskiego in Polish (C) John Haynes

With the Polish-langauge Makbet, Teatr im. Kochanowskiego brings a seedy Scotland to the Globe Theatre’s 2012 Globe-to Globe season….

Performed in Mandarin by The National Theatre of China… Read various reviews and listen to an interview with the director here….

The Tempest by Dhaka Theatre in Bangla (C) Simon Kane

As I left the Globe on Monday night, my first thought was ‘Well, it’s The Tempest, Chris, but not as you know it’….

Othello by Q Brothers, performed in Hip Hop (C) Simon Kane

Somewhere in the middle of the Q Brothers Othello it occurred to me that this may be the most truly ‘global’ offering in the Globe 2 Globe Festival. Because its language, easily digestible hip-hop, comes from the global zone of…