RSC All New Seasons

The Empress: there isn’t a separate thread for this and I don’t think it is worth starting one. It is transferring to the Lyric Hammersmith I think but it isn’t worth the detour. It has not worn well over the last ten years either dramatically or thematically.

After a couple of days in Stratford time for some thoughts... So I'm following Lynette in posting here rather than starting afresh.

Starting with the lesser lights. The Empress is too long for its material. The half about the ayah is probably a decent (half-length) play in its own right. The Victoria and Abdul strand now just looks silly, and is played almost as a parody, which doesn't sit well with the other half. So I'm with Lynette on this one - don't know why they bothered.

The Falklands play - again there is a half decent play in there struggling to get out. All of the Falklands material makes an interesting and decently told tale as a sequence of reported comments (similar to the style of Grenfell at the Dorfman). The UK based sections are like a play on Spitting Image from the 80s and completely out of place (though you suspect the playwright likes those bits more). So in the end frustrating, and I suspect never to be resurrected.

Macbeth - the reviews are out already spanning the gamut of *s. I think the middling ones are about right - someone near me called it a curate's egg which is pretty much spot on. Despite the "in the future" billing it's actually pretty neutral. With the exception of guns instead of swords at brief points (though daggers are present too) you could imagine it all in the past equally well. It's not trying to hammer home a point like in the panned NT version from a while back. Elements are actually well thought out and original - the presence of the three witches on the edges throughout circling as they view the chaos they have unleashed, and the way they emerge at the start; the musical soundscape which really drives the tone; the way in which it is clear that this is a martial society where leadership at arms gives status (though there is a sense that both Macbeth and Banquo have just been out for a summer stroll at the start rather than fighting for their lives, which is a directorial miss). Others missed the mark completely - turning Macbeth into an Othello like length is less than ideal; I didn't sense the required chemistry between Joseph and Kane that marks the best lead couples, and as with too many performances of Macbeth there's no real sense conveyed by the performance as to why Lady M goes bonkers. Other bits are middling since they're mostly in the ranks of why?- I know the RSC has gone for blind casting, but it ends up with real oddities, such as here where Macbeth and MacDuff are male, but Banquo (actually a very good performance), Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain and Siward are all female with no real attempt at trying to make something of it beyond chaning it to Queen Duncan etc.

As for Stewart Lee's much heralded rewrite - it's well delivered by Alison Peebles, playing up the full comic potential, but it's too long. Despite comments, equivocation still appears, as does hell, but all given a modern context to try and make it clearer to all the GCSE students present (at which perhaps too much of this version aims). Then it just keeps on and on, before the bloody door finally gets opened... Overall I think the middling grades in the reviews are right - this is genuinely Macbeth at least unlike some of the others that have been around recently, and an attempt at a novel production as well, but it misses too many of its marks to be really successful.

Are all the cast really Scottish? I once was taken round an acting school and a class was going on. I was mesmerised. All the actors were Scottish…it was a class on accents.

I thought I read that Lady Macbeth was Irish and that was to make her more of an outsider

Just checked and Valene Kane is, indeed, from NI

NH knows how to do a Shakespeare from what I’ve seen at the NT and Bridge. His prod of Othello best I’ve ever seen.

Yes that Measure for Measure was his best. He directed a lot of Shakespeare at NT, in addition to those you mention The Winter's Tale, Henry IV 1&2, Hamlet, Othello. Within that he also had a policy of staging some of those those Shakespeare plays that the NT had never done before, hence All's Well directed by Marianne Elliot. 

Good appointment. In my dreams this will lead to the RSC having a long term residency at the Bridge for part of the year. Great venue for Stratford transfers, a London presence, and a bit more financial security for the Bridge? But maybe I should just be satisfied for now with new ADs and a few signs of a more ambitious RSC.

I think people are overstating how much this appointment might actually change things.

Hytner isn't going to be making programming or casting decisions.

He is there to advise and support.

If he wants to direct for the RSC, that would be great. But why would he when he would have far greater freedom using the resources open to him at the Bridge?

It is good that he wants to be part of the RSC again but it is not like he will be running the placem

That feels like a good home for it. Though the second half of act 2 will need reimagining in terms of the staging.

Is the Midsummer Night’s Dream they’re staging Feb-Mar next year a legacy of the previous regime ? I don’t recall it being announced but I don’t follow them all that closely these days.

EW programmed until April...new stuff afterwards