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The Royal Shakespeare Company - The Changes ContinueDateline: 26th September, 2004So the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is to be refurbished with a thrust stage and backstage and front-of-house improvements. It will not be demolished. The aim of the new configuration is to bring audience and actors closer together and so address some of the problems that the theatre, in its current form, faces and about which, it must be said, RSCphiles have long complained. In the same announcement we are told that "The Swan and The Other Place theatres will be retained, and a new dedicated space for the Company’s educational activity will be created." The Noble-proposed theatre "theme park" on the banks of the Avon appears to have died the death, tied, as it was, to the demolition of the RST. In June three years ago (see our article of 10/06/01) we looked at Adrian Noble's proposals for the future of the RSC and were uncertain whether or not they would be a good thing for the company. Indeed, I recall that I gave a "definite maybe" to the question! Now, over three years later, very little remains of Noble's iconoclastic plans, in spite of the fact that his successor gave them his approval both at the time they were announced and when he was appointed. The ensemble remains and we have had no stars of the stamp of Branagh and Fiennes, let alone Glenn Close and John Malkovich, "parachuting in" for short one-off runs - nor is there any sign of it happening in the future - although we have had Dame Judi making a welcome return. In fact, rehearsal times are now longer and cross-casting, which was to have been the exception rather than the rule, is now the norm. The Barbican remains rejected, but now it appears that the company is to have a permanent London home at the Trafalgar Studios. The harsh economic lesson has been learned and, although the company - as it always has done - may use other West End theatres, it will be associated primarily with the one London house. What of the Academy, the one aspect of Noble's reforms which was universally welcomed (except for its taking over of The Other Place)? A search through the RSC's own site and all its press releases shows that it hs not been mentioned since its first production, King Lear, in 2002, and it director Declan Donnellan is back with Cheek by Jowl and has also directed Romeo and Juliet for the Bolshoi Ballet. The Newcastle season, of course, was not affected by the proposals. Indeed, it was one of the few parts of the company and its work that Noble did not feel the need to change. So are we now back to the situation as it was in 2001, prior to the announcement of the Noble reforms? Not really. The company has moved on. This season's The Tragedies and next season's The Comedies suggest a little more joined-up thinking than perhaps existed in the past, as does the production of seasons like the Jacobean, the Spanish Golden Age and next year's political theatre. And of course the company now has a firm commitment, alongside its major Shakespearean remit, to new writing: witness the new play commissioned from Frank McGuinness as the culmination of the political season. And co-productions with other companies have become more inportant. Back in 2001 Noble and RSC director of education Clare Venables instituted a collaboration with Cardboard Citizens, which led, in 2003, to a joint production of Pericles in a disused warehouse just of the Old Kent Road in Southwark. Last year, during the Newcastle season, the company collaborated with Live Theatre to produce Sean O'Brien's Keepers of the Flame, which starred Alan Howard and David Rintoul alongside NE actors under the direction of Live's AD Max Roberts. Michael Boyd's reforms are not as radical as those proposed by Adrian Noble, but they are equally far-reaching in their effects on the company and the face it presents to the world. There are two important things about them: they build on the strengths of the company which Noble had led so well for so long and they have been introduced in such a way as to gain the acceptance (indeed, enthusiastic acceptance) of the massive constituency of RSC supporters rather than alienate them. When Boyd was appointed as artistic director of the RSC, it was said that he was regarded as a "safe pair of hands", and so it has proved. He has achieved the remarkable balancing act of moving the company on and keeping every vested interest happy! Articles Indices:
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