RSC 2018

true.

Do you think RSC is converting the target young audience though.....are they now flocking to Stratford out of school time..?

They seem to think they are,so,if thats now the stated aim it seems to be fine.

So much for Greg saying....I will put SHAKESPEARE back into RSC.

I think a great Shakespeare production starts with the director and the cast understanding the text and conveying that to the audience.

The language barrier is after all what can turn anybody off. Before he took over Gregory Doran was actually my favourite Shakespeare director because his casts clearly what they were talking about delivering the text.

But as you say trying to make Shakespeare as accessible as possible has become the priority of the main house productions to a detriment. The Roman productions this year seemed to consist of actors delivering the lines as clearly as possible with no real feeling. It was telling when to me Andrew Woodall was one of the few who actually gave a damn playing Julius Caesar and Enobarbus.

And Andrew Jackson had been given directorship of this season and I have seen way better productions from him. Iqbal Khan as well. Okay, Gregory Doran needs some oversight but give your directors some leeway at the reins

I may sound like I prefer a different RSC era, but you also need a Shakespeare production that is creative as well as clear. You can say the same for any production really, and there's always a place for recreating Ancient Rome on stage but this is a leading Shakespeare company we're talking about here that should be encouraging new and exciting interpretations of Shakespeare, like the Almeida's Hamlet.

After 10 years going to Stratford, I am sticking to seeing the main house productions at the cinema (except perhaps the winter show). If you want creativity, see the shows in the Swan Theatre.

I think it was a combination of things. Right actors, play and director. I liked their King John as well mind you. But no nothing has reached the heights since. However, she has been busy with a baby or two I  recent years so probably not her first concern.

Saw that too. It was fine. Not a great play but the Aberg one was just crazy it perked  me up. The working relationship of Aberg/Waldmann/Nixon made them and particularly AYLI into what it was. How much Aberg contributed in that trifecta is unknown. I would like to see Waldmann and Nixon together in something directed by someone else. I would venture that was a special combination for all three.

It wasn't really controversial, it was just stupid. Wasting 4 minutes having the cast sing a karaoke version of an Abba song stops the action and illuminates nothing about the play so what was the point of it ? Just camp window dressing to amuse people who didn't want to be there in the first place.

I think Doran is just old and tired and has no new ideas, the RSC has become to seem very old fashioned under his reign when they should be at the leading edge of Shakespeare interpretation. I really wish he wouldn't be so parochial and invite some distinguished foreign directors to come and shake the place up a bit. I mean why aren't the RSC on the van Hove bandwagon ?

Caught onto the Downton Abbey zeitgeist. It was a sure fire hit in that climate. If they do a Game of thrones inspired Macbeth well,  I am sure that would be endlessly successful too.

He isn't having the best of runs. A lot of what I have seen since LlL and LLL just hasn't been very interesting.

The Doran regime seems hell bent on producing versions of the plays that can be released on DVD to supercede the BBC versions that have been selling for years.

Middle of the road. Not too challenging. Not too innovative.

Safe in many ways but dull.

It has not been a golden age.

Er, I like my Shakespeare all sorts of ways. LLL brought back to life a play that had been in the doldrums for generations. I had only seen one other production of it and that was RSC and with Joseph Fiennes. He was the best bit in it! I like my Shakespeare to make sense ( ergo Aberg making the Bastard in KJ a woman wasn't to my taste nor was Meckler's stick version of R&J) and I like my Shakespeare to be well, I can't think of another word right now and this one will sound pretentious - honest. So I liked RIII with Greg Hicks in Deptford and I loved Hytner's Othello which was certainly the best of that play I've seen and in my top 5 of all Sh prods. And I liked the all gal stuff at the Donmar. I also liked Brooks's MND with the red feather all those years ago. I liked that collapsing chair AYLI at the NT. I liked the Ant and Cleo just now at the RSC. I like the Henry IVs and V the film version with SRB and TH. You wanna chuck another production at me and ask if I like it? I've seen most of them.

That might possibly have been the case with the original Stratford production, but surely not with the Chichester revival?

I loved the chocolate box LLL and I also loved the OTT 80s King John, and I've loved productions ranging from the very traditional (Globe pre-Rice) to the very modern and radical (Joe Hill-Gibbens YV work). People like a range of stuff, it mainly depends on whether it's done well.

Doran's decision choose Troilus and Cressida for his first go at 50/50 male/female casting seems like an odd choice, it is a play very much about a lone woman in an oppressively all-male military environment. It was a distinguished director - Peter Stein I think - who identified the key scene as being the one where Cressida arrives in the Greek camp and immediately "they all want to f*** her". Well, let's see how he casts it.