RSC All New Seasons

Henry VI only goes to end-May so we're waiting for the summer season news too. I would suggest they do a bit of Shakespeare if they can squeeze it in between their failed money-making ventures. If they really intend to complete the full cycle they need to do Richard III, Henry VIII, also Pericles if they're not going to use the get out that it wasn't in the First Folio. Actually I could see them going for Pericles "with its themes of migration an amateur cast of asylum seekers blah blah blah". 

That's a fair point, I hadn’t realised it only goes up until May, thought it was around September time.

Christ don’t give them ideas!

www.whatsonstage.com/stratford-upon-avon-theatre/news/royal-shakespeare-company-2022-productions_55879.html

So, R-III and All's Well. Elsewhere they say Twelfth Night too.

"These two newly announced titles mark the final productions of the company's ten-year pledge to produce all of the Bard's collected plays on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage."

That's fake news. There are plays they haven't done at all (Henry VIII, Pericles) and several they only did in the Swan and not in the RST (eg. Timon, King John).

I quite like Blanche McIntyre as a director, her Titus Andronicus was the best thing by far in their appalling Romans season, typical that it has taken 5 years for them to invite her back, her career in Shakespeare has been developed and sustained by the Globe.

Some top virtue signalling from the launch: "Erica Whyman, acting artistic director of the RSC, said the company was committed “to partnership, to inclusion and justice”."

I am not sure reinforcing Tudor propaganda is terribly progressive.

I know that the play is not supposed to be historically accurate but for me the key to Richard III has always been the psychology of the man not the physical challenges he faced.

One could argue that the latter informed the former. But the reality of the man is that he was a successful warrior and not outwardly encumbered by his scoliosis.

It is great that the RSC are employing disabled actors. But it would be far more exciting if they were to cast this actor as Romeo or Lysander. This feels like a very safe and obvious move.

Richard of Gloucester in the play certainly displays psychological issues but no one is saying how important it is for an actor cast in the role to have lived experience of psychopathy.

I know representation matters. But it should never be tokenistic.

When I directed the piece, I was determined to focus on the psychological aspects of the character and didn't ask my actor to portray any form of physical difference. I think it is rarely acceptable to ask an able bodied actor to act disabled. And with this play, the issues around Richard's disability are of far less relevant to creating a thrilling piece of theatre than getting inside the mind of the monster Shakespeare created.

Great that the RSC have taken a small step towards representing disabled actors on Stratford stages.

I just wish they had been a bit more creative.

It may be a first for the RSC, but it's not a first. The 2017 Northern Broadsides production, which began in Hull as part of the City of Culture, had Mat Fraser in the title role.

Daniel Monks in that updated version at the Donmar.

Hashtag CRINGE

Here are some exciting new appointments by the RSC.

"The RSC has also named three new digital fellows: writer and dramaturg Kirsty Housley, digital artist Adam Clarke, and multi-platform artist Ben Glover.
Housley will explore the future of artificial intelligence and the gender biases around it, Clarke will focus on the crossover between live performance and video games, and Glover will work to develop captioning technology in live performance."

I think real yoof find that kind of marketing embarrassing and patronising, so I doubt it achieves anything, other than giving marketing interns something to add to their CVs.

I wish the RSC wouldn't dabble in digital art. What I want from a theatre company is...high quality live theatre, real human actors speaking and performing on stage in front of live audiences. Is that such an odd thing to prioritise? I found the virtual reality Dream film they did over lockdown just pointless - it was only loosely Shakespearean, and very dull to watch compared with big budget animations - understandably so, because animation is not where the RSC is meant to excel. Fair enough to explore captioning technology to make theatre more accessible, but why is the RSC putting money and resources into VR, video gaming, etc?

As a "yoof" myself, there is no one in my age group that this kind of marketing will appeal to and, unless it's supposed to be drenched in irony (which doesn't come across whatsoever), it just reads as painfully out of touch.