RSC All New Seasons

In the Royal Shakespeare Theatre:

Troilus and Cressida directed by Doran, music by Evelyn Glennie, 12th Oct - 17 Nov
A Christmas Carol returns from 4th Dec - 20th January
So only one main stage show over Christmas unlike the two in rep this year.

In the Swan:

Tamburlaine directed by Michael Boyd, 16 August - 1 December
Given it has the same designer I suspect this may be based on Boyd's 2014 Brooklyn production 
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/theater/marlowes-tamburlaine-parts-i-and-ii-in-brooklyn.html

Timon of Athens directed by Simon Godwin, with Kathryn Hunter as Timon 7th Dec - 22 Feb
Tartuffe, directed by Iqbal khan from 7th Sept - 23rd Feb


An interesting selection there although I thought that about the Rome season and look how that turned out

Also announced today - £10 tickets if you've never booked for the RSC before and can be there on a Friday: www.rsc.org.uk/first-time-fridays

At first glance this looks like an excellent season! Short run in the mainhouse for Troilus though?
They are obvs working through the Marlowe canon, Tamburlaine is the fourth play done in a few years.
V promising.

If you click on "this performance will be filmed" it appears it will be for cinema broadcast



If so it seems odd for the cinema broadcast performance to be the day before press night!

I notice on the RSC website the author for Timon Of Athens is a certain William Shakespeare. I thought the latest thinking among those who trouble themselves about such things is that Thomas Middleton wrote a great deal of it. Indeed it is included in his latest magnum opus of his collected works. Since the RSC are including this in their attempt to perform all the plays of Mr Shakespeare does this mean a production of Thomas Moore is to be included in the future? Further what of Edward III which was included in the Oxford complete works of Shakespeare? What about Ironside. (No not the one in the wheelchair the play Edmund Ironside) Or is there a threshold for how much Will had to pen before it gets included? At least it gives a chance to see the misanthropic side of the personality of the millennium.

Does this mean no Pericles for us to ponder who wrote it? Are they using the First Folio text or just the list of plays?

The Two Noble Kinsmen is also notable by its absence in the First Folio and the play has disputed authorship. However, it was produced in 2016. Maybe a fondness for John Fletcher from Doran meant its inclusion in the First Folio. 

I notice that they have stopped their practice of listing the plays in he programmes with the one already produced highlighted, not quite sure why. Maybe because the whole thing is taking longer than first thought. In 2013 Doran was saying six or seven uears well that has obvs gone out the window!

Troilus and Cressida is difficult to do and so not done that often and they don’t put it on the school syllabus. But it is so modern, so right now. I hope they do as good a job with it as say, Hytner did with his Othello.

I know academics love the whole authorship thing - but from a playgoer's perspective, it really doesn't bother me in the slightest as long as the text is theatrically vibrant and comes alive in the hands of talented actors under the guidance of a director with good taste.

Other than rejecting the Oxfordian school of thought as being ludicrous, I think whoever Shakespeare was and whoever he collaborated with (and when), some great plays were written that have become the mainstay of world theatre.

Yes, it is fun to play with the variants between the different folios and quartos to shape a performing version that works for my particular vision/cast - but as for the intricate analysis of each scene to work out if it was Shakespeare or Shakespeare and someone else, or just someone else entirely - that really doesn't impact on my enjoyment of a play on the stage.

My first T&C was the late lamented John Barton's, which meant the bar was set so high others have not come near to it. Saw an terrible one by the Berliner Ensemble. Set was literally rubbish and costumes not much better. Treated the play like a cartoon to be played for laughs. Only good moment was at the end when they stopped acting and spoke the speech as intended and not like an in joke between us and them. 

The Folger Shakespeare Library do a podcast on Shakespeare and it was in one of those I heard about the Marlowe attribution, although I see our trusty Google operative HG has found another reference. 

It's a failure of nerve not to put Timon on in the main house - NT managed to fill the Olivier with it (with appropriate casting) and Doran's own production of it (with Michael Pennington replacing an indisposed Alan Bates) was in the main house (I think - it transferred to the Barbican main stage anyway).