THE inaugural York International Shakespeare Festival is giving voice to performances from Japan, Catalonia, Poland and London, as well as myriad shows from the host city.

Actor-manager Barrie Rutter has led Northern Broadsides in bringing the northern voice to Shakespeare since 1992, and such is the Halifax company's popularity that its national tour of Jonathan Miller's production of King Lear has played Halifax, Leeds and Scarborough already.

The main stage of the University of York's department of theatre, film and television will be the most compact location on the tour; another day, another challenge after the cellar-level Viaduct in Halifax and the theatre-in-the-round at Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, and one that Rutter and his company are keenly awaiting.

For all the epic scale of Shakespeare's tragedy, and much as it bears the weight of the world on its troubled shoulders, Miller's production is an intimate piece, wherein the veteran director strips back the theatricality to focus on the emotional undertow of family friction and factions; the impact on the heart and soul as comprehension slips out of reach.

In particular, this seeps into Barrie Rutter's performance as Lear, a role he first played when he stepped in after the sudden death of Brian Glover in 1997. By his own admission, Rutter was too young, but now at 68 the crown fits and Miller's uncomplicated staging with Elizabethan costumes and a plain stage fits him too. In a nutshell, Rutter's Lear doesn't seek to out-blast the storm on the heath, nor is he a figure of pathos; it is his most audacious turn in years.

Lear is "the play I know best", says Miller, and all those years of experience and past productions pour out of his latest staging, one of quieter revelations amid the gruesome deaths and eye gouging, that will help you know the play better. On top of all that, two stage favourites, John Branwell as Gloucester and Fine Time Fontayne's Fool remind you again of the grit and grip of the northern voice.

In his programme note, Rutter jokes that "waiting till I'm eighty might just be a tad imprudent" when assessing the best age to play Lear, but Japanese actress Aki Isoda is still performing and still travelling abroad at 84 in her capacity as a pioneer of the solo performer play in her homeland.

No sooner had she arrived in Britain with her entourage of dressers, production team and stage crew, than she was dress-rehearsing her double bill of Lady Macbeth and A Vision Of Ophelia in York in Japanese with English surtitles on screen. Come Wednesday, she will perform in Ostrava, Czech Republic; by Saturday, she will be in Gdansk, Poland.

Remarkably, she has been playing the tragic, young, broken Ophelia for 50 years in the kabuki style: all immaculate wigs and beautiful costumes and delicately mannered movement.

Her Lady Macbeth "in a Western style" might initially look hammy to our eyes, but don't jump to  conclusions. This is the Japanese perception of Western performance, the Disney form of artificial perfection.