Milosevic — the musical — plays in Kosovo
GRACANICA, Kosovo: Twelve years after he died during his trial for war crimes, Slobodan Milosevic, the one-time Serbian strongman, divided his audience again, this time as a character in a musical that made its debut on Tuesday.
“The Lift — The Slobodan Show,” written by Belgrade-based writer Jelena Bogavac, focuses more on Milosevic’s personal relationship with his powerful wife Mirjana, his daughter Marija and his son Marko than on the politics that made him infamous.
Milosevic rode a wave of nationalism to power in Belgrade in 1989 as communism was collapsing across eastern Europe. He then led Serbia through a decade of wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Hailed by Serbian nationalists as their champion against Catholic Croats and Bosnian and Kosovar Albanian Muslims, Milosevic was seen as a brutal dictator by the West.
Around 200 Kosovo Serbs attended the show at a theater in Gracanica, a Serb enclave just outside Kosovo’s capital Pristina. They expressed mixed feelings about it.
“There’s nothing there, it’s simply a great manipulation... a political theater which actually tricked us,” said Zivojin Rakocevic, a former journalist from Gracanica.
In one scene Milosevic comforts his daughter over the poor financial state of her radio station. In another he tells Marko not to overheat the water in the family swimming pool.