Rehearsals for Nušić’s Comedy “A Suspicious Person” Have Begun; Premiere Scheduled for Mid-October on the “Raša Plaović” Stage of the National Theatre in Belgrade
22. June 2026.
Rehearsals for the play “A Suspicious Person”, based on the text by Serbia’s greatest comedy playwright, Branislav Nušić, and directed by Nikola Bundalo, began at the National Theatre in Belgrade on 23 June.
The premiere is planned for mid-October on the “Raša Plaović” Stage. The cast includes Igor Đorđević (Jerotije Pantić), Anja Mandić (Anđa), Vaja Dujević (Marica), Jovan Jovanović (Žika), Andrej Nježić (Đoka), Danilo Lončarević (Milisav), Vučić Perović (Aleksa Žunjić), Marko Todorović (Vića), and Nemanja Stamatović (Master Miladin).
Nušić wrote this play, which humorously deals with the corrupt state of civil servants in Serbia during the Obrenović regime, between 1887 and 1888. It vividly portrays provincial police authority and exposes its limited judgment and bureaucratic narrow-mindedness.
The plot is vaudeville-like and revolves around two letters - an official one and a love letter. The love story drives the main plot and intertwines with it at key and most interesting moments.
Nušić skilfully manipulates information and creates strong dramatic irony, most notably when the audience is more informed than the characters - when it knows that Đoka, the fiancé of police captain Jerotije Pantić’s daughter, has been arrested as a suspicious person.
In this play as well, Nušić emphasizes the vitality of his negative characters, as they constantly want more and believe that everything is permitted to them. On the other hand, we can recognize the “Nušić’s optimism” in their charm and humour.
The artistic director of the Drama Department assessed that “A Suspicious Person” is a play that is “far from naive” and that it always reflects our current level of maturity.
“It has been like that for 150 years. This play precisely and subtly sets mathematical parameters for how mature we are, both individually and as a society, at any given moment. Today we live in an age in which we have all become suspicious persons to one another - from marital, family, and neighbourly relations, to social, political, and ideological ones. Even artificial intelligence today views us as suspicious persons, because it sees us are merely as a transitional phase toward something else. That is why I believe this is the best moment to laugh at ourselves, but not through bitter satire. It is easy to be ideologically clever and lecture others; we need to look at one another as human beings. I deeply believe that this is a time in which we must restore comedy as a remedy for personal and social problems. However, as artists we have a responsibility, as the medicine we administer can also become poison. This is a new moment in an era in which the National Theatre should be courageous, creative, relaxed, and benevolent. With this play I hope for a major hit, but as a spectator it is even more important to me that in a world lacking laughter and love we use that laughter to restore love, relaxation, and become more whole human beings,” Zoran Stefanović says.
Bundalo’s starting point for interpreting “A Suspicious Person” does not follow the direction of a classic, light comedy, but consciously leans toward grotesque and black comedy, infused with unease and bizarreness.
“I view the play from a different, side angle, placing the central emphasis on the lower clerical apparatus, not just on the individual at the top. The focus of the play is on the entire system and on parts of the text that are often unfairly cut or neglected in staging. I relocate conflict and paranoia within the collective itself, where, driven by the idea that man is a wolf to man, subordinate clerks mutually set traps, inform on each other, and target one another as threats. Through such humour, I do not aim to moralise, but to encourage the audience to laugh at themselves and question how much we ourselves contribute to social anomalies, because the system is essentially all of us. And therein lies the relevance of this play, because what is common between the time it was written and today - we are,” says the young director Bundalo, for whom this will be his first engagement at the National Theatre in Belgrade.
The dramaturge is Goran Starčević, and the artistic team also includes Dragana Purković Macan (set designer), Marija Marković Milojev (costume designer), Petar Topalović (composer), Marija Milenković (stage movement), and Ljiljana Mrkić Popović (stage speech coach).
The producers are Jasmina Urošević and Marija Kovačević, the stage manager is Sanja Ugrinić Mimica, and the prompters are Marija Nedeljkov and Ljubica Raković.
This will be the sixth production of “A Suspicious Person” at the National Theatre in Belgrade, where it first premiered on 29 May 1923.
Subsequent productions were realised on 14 March 1938, 7 October 1960, 20 April 1985, and most recently on 21 June 2017.
