RSC All New Seasons

The production of Henry VIII in the church at Stratford worked a treat. No artificial lighting. A very sucky uppy ending but he gets away with it. Not a dry eye in the house … well church in this case.

Youngest I've seen in any professional production is 29. 

"Wilson said the production would be set in an imagined near-future: “the climate is more extreme, there’s scarcity of resources and war."

Sounds like the flop Rufus Norris production. However I think Wils Wilson is a far better choice to direct this and it could well be good. 

Nothing 'old hat' about wanting actors who have a level of Shakespeare experience. Twenty years ago, our national companies had a wealth of older actors ( often playing smaller, but key roles) who brought great gravitas and weight to these parts - and so enhanced the whole production. Now, it seems quite the reverse: give parts to anyone regardless of experience of classical work. The current RSC As You Like It is a pleasant exception: get older actors who've played a ton of Shakespeare together. But then - *controversial point coming* - theatre is so very driven now but what fits so many 'agendas', box-ticking etc. A good example is Hayden Gwynne playing Stanley Baldwin in the new Churchill play at The Donmar. Of course, anyone can play anything - thats what actors do - but what was the point of that particular piece of casting ? Particularly when the actress concerned adopted a lower register , walked in a 'manly' way and did lots of back-slapping. Lets use our older actors as often as possible. A quick glance to other cultures illustrates well how actors with 20 years + experience are used, celebrated and employed.  

A young Macbeth. Let’s hope he gets a better production than poor Rory Kinnear did at the NT. I don’t think age matters in this role does it? Not like King Lear who must be old enough to have married daughters. Macbeth has no kids, might have lost a baby…sounds rather appropriate. We’ll see.

Of course during their lifetime both Eden and Churchill themselves were rumoured to have had gay relationships (the former almost certainly had) at a time when amongst the upper classes it was not unusual for gay men to marry and have children to conceal the fact. In that inter-war period there were quite a large number of gay and bisexual MPs (“The Glamour Boys”) who were frequent visitors to the more liberal environment of Berlin where they witnessed the rise of the Nazis and were able to warn about it. I think you could easily get a 10-part Netflix series out of all this.

The Chips Channon diaries provide a good evokation of the inter-war era amongst that class - he was an MP, married, had a son, was bisexual, and was later in a long-term relationship with Terence Rattigan.

www.chortle.co.uk/news/2023/07/08/53478/stewart_lee_rewrites_rubbish_shakespeare?rss&fbclid=IwAR2Y2x2V-CPbNTErHxoQk54saUyN9yZ2gHBDklEiZSd9OcC7cwVigc_p7uk

Stewart lee rewriting the porter scene in the macbeth they are doing

RSC going for the under-represented middle-aged middle-class white Guardian reader audience. As the audience will be full of GCSE school parties it might have been wiser to use a comedian they might actually have heard of.

I wonder why he thinks Alison Peebles is inspired casting ? Looks entirely conventional to me.

I’ve seen that scene ad-libbed and with lots of new text and with a Scottish actress playing the part and it still isn’t funny. I’ve also seen it cut which is maybe a better idea.

When Rupert Goold directed Lear with Pete Postlethwaite in Liverpool he approached Ken Dodd to play Fool and told him he could add any amount of new material he wanted. Sadly it didn’t happen, although Forbes Masson who did play it was really good.

What a marvellous crowd pleaser and marketing joy: new stand up each performance with their material and style slightly adapted…” this Macbeth, eh? “