NORTHERN Broadsides first banged the drum for the northern voice and clog-danced on the grave of southern-softie theatre in 1992.

Goodbye butter, hello Rutter, as Richard III crackled in the night air of Middleham Castle.

Actor-manager Barrie Rutter is still on his beat, and so Broadsides go to war on Shakespeare's history plays in tandem with the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Last weekend was the first of the Trilogy Saturday marathons, with more to come in Leeds and Scarborough: a chance to see all three plays with a 10.30am start and a 10.30pm finish, with plenty of blue-blooded butchery in between.

Rutter has taken his knife to Shakespeare, but his act is not steeped in blood. Aptly for the Wars Of The Roses, he has instead pruned four plays into three - Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III - retaining an epic scale while providing a history lesson with the wit and clarity of a David Starkey.

The French, for example, are reduced to Joan of Arc (Maeve Larkin) and English insults at their "fickle and wavering" ways.

The Broadsides house style remains no-nonsense: Jessica Worrall's austere set design is a shell of scaffolding and blasted stones (and plucked roses): it could be Baghdad, Bosnia or Wembley Stadium today. The focus is on sound: Shakespeare's words are fired in the heat of Rutter's conversational northern diction that makes the blood and desperation all the more real. Drums symbolise two tribes going to war, and clogs are wheeled out as the weapon of choice, as Broadsides play up to their trademark.

This does, however, render the second play too much a facsimile of the first in rhythm and style, until the definitive Rutter directorial moment: Richard Standing's strutting Edward IV celebrates his usurping of Andrew Whitehead's Bible-clutching Henry VI by leading a hot jazz number on the double bass as Queen Margaret (Helen Sheals) tap-dances. By now, all but Conrad Nelson's Richard are in modern suits; he is rocking the infant prince's pram in battle attire.

Rutter's play cycle - although you can see the plays individually - lets you see not only the winter of Richard's discontent, but its spring in Edward IV. Nelson, carrying his own leg injury, also carries the too pedestrian, declamatory Richard III, with the welcome contrast of his stealthy, introspective, malevolently humorous Richard, whose self-hatred culminates in his mental disintegration at Bosworth.

Wars Of The Roses, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until April 22; box office 0113 213 7700. Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 1 to 10; box office 01723 370 541.