Maverick

You mention suspension of disbelief which is essential in so many plays. One of the biggest challenges for modern audiences has been integrated casting where plays have been cast without regard to colour. I went to quite a few conferences on the subject in the early eighties where people expressed the view that to have a member of a family, say Juliet, who was black while the rest of her family was white was not credible.

We gained some wonderful performances through this approach and it has spread to opera and ballet (which character looks like Luciano Pavarotti anyway?) to great effect.

I can even cope with American accents, although I'm not convinced by the claim that they are closer to Elizabethan language than present day English accents (although Estuary English is a little beyond the pale). I love to hear Shakespeare spoken in any dialect, it's better than not hearing it.