RSC All New Seasons

As You Like It cast announced. www.rsc.org.uk/as-you-like-it/cast-and-creatives

Malcolm Sinclair - nice!

Some others I recognise

Otherwise still not selling me

Agree, not particularly exciting casting. I like James Hayes and I’ve seen him on stage more than any other actor (almost) but I really associate him with NT rather than RSC.

The RSC is often the place audiences experience Shakespeare for the first time. And thus it is important that main stage productions have this in mind.

The abject failure of the recent Julius Caesar with a first time Shakespeare director shows how badly things can go wrong even when someone has an apparently strong CV elsewhere.

Whyman herself had almost know Shakespeare experience when she was first appointed and has hardly increased her CV in that area since she was appointed.

And looking at other spaces, Emma Rice had directed one Shakespeare piece (in a heavily adapted form) before she was made AD at The Globe. And that didn't end well.

I am not saying the RSC shouldn't work with directors new to Shakespeare but directors should build up their experience with Jacobethan theatre before being given main house productions.

That can be with other companies or in other RSC spaces.

Thankfully the Whyman interregnum is coming to an end. We can but hope that the new ADs return to working with directors with a strong background in Jacobethan theatre for main house Shakespeare productions.

I really don't know what you mean by this.

There is no skeleton key for a good Shakespearean production, not even when a director has had success with an earlier production/company; surely that's a given. All directors fail at some stage, especially the ones who are prepared to take risks, and it's the same when it comes to programming. Surely a theatre company like the RSC has to embrace change, take chances, and march headlong into new territory. Some things will come off, some things won't; that's the drill.

You’re harking after an RSC that just doesn’t - and probably can’t and almost certainly won’t - exist anymore. The most in-demand directors and actors don’t want to work there now. It’s been outgrown in the last 25 years by the progress made at so many other major buildings - the National, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, the Donmar, the Almeida, and now the Bridge as well. Even Sheffield Theatres and Bristol Old Vic are more likely to attract higher profile talent than the RSC. Sadly I think the RSC is more of a tourist destination than anything else. The Globe is the same.

Off the top of my head I can think of the following actors that have performed in a Shakespeare production at one of those theatres in the last decade or so; Kit Harrington, Andrew Scott, Saoirse Ronan, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen, David Morrissey, Ben Whishaw, John Simm, Katherine Parkinson, Sophie Okonedo, Rory Kinnear, Tamsin Greig, Anne-Marie Duff, John Heffernan, Anna Maxwell-Martin. Even David Tennant, who has shown great loyalty to the RSC, has turned to the Donmar for his upcoming Macbeth. I won’t bother doing an exhaustive directors list but even just Hytner, Icke, Frecknall, and Godwin should suffice. In basic terms I think the RSC (and the Globe) would struggle to convince any of those actors or directors to take a job at Stratford for the foreseeable future.

Correct. That's because the RSC has no London presence and most major actors won't go there without a guaranteed London run - when the RSC promised one Christopher Ecclestone and Simon Russell-Beale worked there under Doran. Directors are different, the RSC under Doran simply hasn't offered anything to the leading directors or, like Godwin, not enough work to stop them moving elsewhere.  

On a separate point I don't think any progress at all has been made in the last 25 years at the NT, the Donmar, the Almeida, the Old Vic or the Young Vic in attracting high profile talent for Shakespeare. They always could and it wasn't to the detriment of the RSC. 

I'm not that bothered by them using a first-time Shakespeare director - it is much more of a problem to use such a director on the very large, unforgiving and difficult thrust stage of the RST. They should give them something in their smaller theatres first. 

I'm reading and enjoying Greg Doran's book Journey Through The First Folio. He mentions Two Gentleman of Verona which was directed during Doran's time as AD by "the brilliant Simon Godwin" (his words). If he rated Godwin so highly why was he so "ill-used" by the RSC and allowed to drift off to the NT and the USA?

Isn't it this week the regime change at Stratford takes place? It does concern me that by all accounts elsewhere on this thread it will be the best part of another year before any of their productions take the stage. I have to say I enjoyed Hamnet last week more than I expected to, so I'm willing to give EW the benefit of the doubt on that one, if on little else during her tenure.

think rsc press tomorrow...will be more EW as new team dont get to plan until next spring.....expect more off putting work to lecture us poor souls.
roll on 2024

I stand corrected. In general though it always looked like Doran had limited commitment to the "lesser" repertoire - under another AD Doran directed Timon in the RST and Barbican but under him as AD he relegated it to a short run in the Swan. Under another AD Doran had a big success directing Henry VIII in the Swan but under him as AD he didn't produce it at all in his "complete " cycle. He even relegated his own production of Troilus to a short run in the Swan despite his initial promise to produce every play in the canon on the main RST stage. 

True. King John. Another one he didn’t produce at all was Pericles.

I’ve seen 8 productions of Pericles and they were all good in one way or another, it plays a lot better than you’d imagine from the text and it’s a pity the last RSC production of it was in 2006 - they surely can’t go 20 years without producing it can they ?

Given it's her farewell tour, remarkably middle of the road selection from Whyman. Leaving by directing something in the Swan also feels like an appropriate full stop to this era - and at least something about Britten is likely to be more audience pleasing than the things she's crammed in for the current season.

Look forward to BoD (it does mention Wilton's on the production page on the website), and The Fair Maid of the West could be promising too (I enjoyed the P&P (sort of) when it first appeared, less so as it trundled endlessly on - be interesting to see if McArthur goes for the same approach here).

Given how seriously poor R&J was this spring, I'm less concerned by the lack of Shakespeare - let the new ADs start afresh next year.