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Post by bordeaux on May 5, 2023 8:54:51 GMT
How come he's reviewing for the Guardian ? Can't see the point of them getting rid of Billington only then to use the inferior Lawson. I thought Billington had retired but in fact he still reviewing as before in "Country Life" and apparently has been since he left the Guardian. He does something every couple of months, perhaps just things he fancies. Cymbeline, Julius Caesar and The Tempest recently, plus The Visitors by Barney Norris at the Windmill, Arms and the Man at the Orange Tree last autumn. I rather like him. I always thought the only problem with those review programmes he used to do in the 90s and later was that he often had more intelligent things to say about the works under discussion than the guests. |
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Post by David J on May 10, 2023 17:56:19 GMT
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 10, 2023 18:46:43 GMT
I am more concerned that the director has zero professional experience with Shakespeare that I can see than the casting
There are some talented actors in the cast. But I genuinely do not believe that the RST should ever be where you start directing Shakespeare.
Cut your teeth elsewhere and then get the invite.
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Post by Jan on May 10, 2023 19:22:01 GMT
Agree, not particularly exciting casting. I like James Hayes and I’ve seen him on stage more than any other actor (almost) but I really associate him with NT rather than RSC. |
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Post by andbingowashisname on May 10, 2023 21:00:21 GMT
I am more concerned that the director has zero professional experience with Shakespeare that I can see than the casting There are some talented actors in the cast. But I genuinely do not believe that the RST should ever be where you start directing Shakespeare. Cut your teeth elsewhere and then get the invite. Hard disagree. He is an experienced director, who has been doing interesting work in important buildings for about 20 years. The RSC is not a finishing school. I think he - and other directors - should be encouraged to diversify beyond their well-trodden professional milieu, so I think it’s good news. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 10, 2023 21:44:56 GMT
The RSC is often the place audiences experience Shakespeare for the first time. And thus it is important that main stage productions have this in mind.
The abject failure of the recent Julius Caesar with a first time Shakespeare director shows how badly things can go wrong even when someone has an apparently strong CV elsewhere.
Whyman herself had almost know Shakespeare experience when she was first appointed and has hardly increased her CV in that area since she was appointed.
And looking at other spaces, Emma Rice had directed one Shakespeare piece (in a heavily adapted form) before she was made AD at The Globe. And that didn't end well.
I am not saying the RSC shouldn't work with directors new to Shakespeare but directors should build up their experience with Jacobethan theatre before being given main house productions.
That can be with other companies or in other RSC spaces.
Thankfully the Whyman interregnum is coming to an end. We can but hope that the new ADs return to working with directors with a strong background in Jacobethan theatre for main house Shakespeare productions.
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Post by Jon on May 10, 2023 22:24:10 GMT
I get the feeling some on here just want the RSC to be a closed shop....
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Post by andbingowashisname on May 10, 2023 22:55:52 GMT
The RSC is often the place audiences experience Shakespeare for the first time. And thus it is important that main stage productions have this in mind. I really don't know what you mean by this. There is no skeleton key for a good Shakespearean production, not even when a director has had success with an earlier production/company; surely that's a given. All directors fail at some stage, especially the ones who are prepared to take risks, and it's the same when it comes to programming. Surely a theatre company like the RSC has to embrace change, take chances, and march headlong into new territory. Some things will come off, some things won't; that's the drill. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 10, 2023 23:36:55 GMT
I mean that RST productions must be of the highest possible standard. That doesn't mean bland or lacking in ambition.
But the best that resources allow it to be
There are other spaces and companies for learning and experimenting.
But the RST/RSC should not be one of them.
The RSC has been drifting in a sea of mediocrity for most of the Doran/Whyman era. It is time to put quality back at the heart of the company and to attract directors both new and old who have delivered brilliant Shakespeare productions through their career.
Great productions are what the company has been lacking for too long.
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Post by andbingowashisname on May 11, 2023 0:10:03 GMT
I mean that RST productions must be of the highest possible standard. That doesn't mean bland or lacking in ambition. But the best that resources allow it to be There are other spaces and companies for learning and experimenting. But the RST/RSC should not be one of them. The RSC has been drifting in a sea of mediocrity for most of the Doran/Whyman era. It is time to put quality back at the heart of the company and to attract directors both new and old who have delivered brilliant Shakespeare productions through their career. Great productions are what the company has been lacking for too long. You’re harking after an RSC that just doesn’t - and probably can’t and almost certainly won’t - exist anymore. The most in-demand directors and actors don’t want to work there now. It’s been outgrown in the last 25 years by the progress made at so many other major buildings - the National, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, the Donmar, the Almeida, and now the Bridge as well. Even Sheffield Theatres and Bristol Old Vic are more likely to attract higher profile talent than the RSC. Sadly I think the RSC is more of a tourist destination than anything else. The Globe is the same. Off the top of my head I can think of the following actors that have performed in a Shakespeare production at one of those theatres in the last decade or so; Kit Harrington, Andrew Scott, Saoirse Ronan, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen, David Morrissey, Ben Whishaw, John Simm, Katherine Parkinson, Sophie Okonedo, Rory Kinnear, Tamsin Greig, Anne-Marie Duff, John Heffernan, Anna Maxwell-Martin. Even David Tennant, who has shown great loyalty to the RSC, has turned to the Donmar for his upcoming Macbeth. I won’t bother doing an exhaustive directors list but even just Hytner, Icke, Frecknall, and Godwin should suffice. In basic terms I think the RSC (and the Globe) would struggle to convince any of those actors or directors to take a job at Stratford for the foreseeable future. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 11, 2023 0:40:44 GMT
Is it now wrong to want the RSC to be the home for top quality Shakespeare productions?
Of course not. It is exactly what the company is there to do.
The fact that Doran and Whyman have let the company drift into decline makes it all the more important that change is implemented and learning from past successes is clearly part of that process.
There is no reason why the RSC cannot attract big name actors if it chooses to do so. But I am far more concerned about the step by step elimination of the concept of the RSC ensemble which allowed young talent to be nurtured.
Working with experienced Shakespeare professionals is part of the mix as well.
Most of us can recall productions from past years that still rank very highly. The Doran period has not added many to the list of truly memorable shows. That is a huge shame.
The RSC does need to change. Urgently. But not by ignoring what has made it great in the past. It also has to learn what went wrong over the past decade and ensure that those mistakes are never repeated.
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Post by Jan on May 11, 2023 6:23:18 GMT
You’re harking after an RSC that just doesn’t - and probably can’t and almost certainly won’t - exist anymore. The most in-demand directors and actors don’t want to work there now. It’s been outgrown in the last 25 years by the progress made at so many other major buildings - the National, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, the Donmar, the Almeida, and now the Bridge as well. Even Sheffield Theatres and Bristol Old Vic are more likely to attract higher profile talent than the RSC. Sadly I think the RSC is more of a tourist destination than anything else. The Globe is the same. Off the top of my head I can think of the following actors that have performed in a Shakespeare production at one of those theatres in the last decade or so; Kit Harrington, Andrew Scott, Saoirse Ronan, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen, David Morrissey, Ben Whishaw, John Simm, Katherine Parkinson, Sophie Okonedo, Rory Kinnear, Tamsin Greig, Anne-Marie Duff, John Heffernan, Anna Maxwell-Martin. Even David Tennant, who has shown great loyalty to the RSC, has turned to the Donmar for his upcoming Macbeth. I won’t bother doing an exhaustive directors list but even just Hytner, Icke, Frecknall, and Godwin should suffice. In basic terms I think the RSC (and the Globe) would struggle to convince any of those actors or directors to take a job at Stratford for the foreseeable future. Correct. That's because the RSC has no London presence and most major actors won't go there without a guaranteed London run - when the RSC promised one Christopher Ecclestone and Simon Russell-Beale worked there under Doran. Directors are different, the RSC under Doran simply hasn't offered anything to the leading directors or, like Godwin, not enough work to stop them moving elsewhere. On a separate point I don't think any progress at all has been made in the last 25 years at the NT, the Donmar, the Almeida, the Old Vic or the Young Vic in attracting high profile talent for Shakespeare. They always could and it wasn't to the detriment of the RSC. I'm not that bothered by them using a first-time Shakespeare director - it is much more of a problem to use such a director on the very large, unforgiving and difficult thrust stage of the RST. They should give them something in their smaller theatres first. |
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Post by Jan on May 11, 2023 6:40:47 GMT
I get the feeling some on here just want the RSC to be a closed shop.... Correct. Though I'd say "company" rather than "closed shop". So, for example after "Two Gentlemen" they should have put Simon Godwin on the staff and given him 1-2 productions a year from then on rather than waiting 3-4 years to give him another production by which time the NT had tied him in. Lots of theatres operate in that way - is the Almeida " a closed shop" just because Rebecca Frecknall directs something there every season ? Once again, here are the directors who the RSC used during the decade under Doran for Shakespeare productions - no-one got more than one production every three years - what's the benefit of that to either the RSC or those directors ? Greg Doran 12 Erica Whyman 3 Christopher Luscombe 3 Simon Godwin 3 Polly Findlay 2 Blanche McIntyre 2 Iqbal Khan 2 Angus Jackson 2 Eleanor Rhode 1 Phillip Breen 1 Fiona Laird 1 Melly Still 1 Justin Audibert 1 Kimberley Sykes 1 |
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Post by richardh on May 29, 2023 14:20:46 GMT
I'm reading and enjoying Greg Doran's book Journey Through The First Folio. He mentions Two Gentleman of Verona which was directed during Doran's time as AD by "the brilliant Simon Godwin" (his words). If he rated Godwin so highly why was he so "ill-used" by the RSC and allowed to drift off to the NT and the USA?
Isn't it this week the regime change at Stratford takes place? It does concern me that by all accounts elsewhere on this thread it will be the best part of another year before any of their productions take the stage. I have to say I enjoyed Hamnet last week more than I expected to, so I'm willing to give EW the benefit of the doubt on that one, if on little else during her tenure.
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Post by Jan on May 29, 2023 15:20:21 GMT
I'm reading and enjoying Greg Doran's book Journey Through The First Folio. He mentions Two Gentleman of Verona which was directed during Doran's time as AD by "the brilliant Simon Godwin" (his words). If he rated Godwin so highly why was he so "ill-used" by the RSC and allowed to drift off to the NT and the USA? Isn't it this week the regime change at Stratford takes place? It does concern me that by all accounts elsewhere on this thread it will be the best part of another year before any of their productions take the stage. I have to say I enjoyed Hamnet last week more than I expected to, so I'm willing to give EW the benefit of the doubt on that one, if on little else during her tenure. Also notable they didn’t transfer the Godwin “Two Gentlemen” anywhere - after it’s initial short run with very positive reviews it disappeared forever. Same with Doran’s recent Cymbeline of course. When he took over he spoke approvingly of the Opera practice of reviving popular productions and keeping them in the repertoire. One of many occasions where he said one thing and did the exact opposite. |
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Post by cirque on May 31, 2023 7:49:13 GMT
think rsc press tomorrow...will be more EW as new team dont get to plan until next spring.....expect more off putting work to lecture us poor souls.
roll on 2024
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 31, 2023 8:10:02 GMT
I'm reading and enjoying Greg Doran's book Journey Through The First Folio. He mentions Two Gentleman of Verona which was directed during Doran's time as AD by "the brilliant Simon Godwin" (his words). If he rated Godwin so highly why was he so "ill-used" by the RSC and allowed to drift off to the NT and the USA? Isn't it this week the regime change at Stratford takes place? It does concern me that by all accounts elsewhere on this thread it will be the best part of another year before any of their productions take the stage. I have to say I enjoyed Hamnet last week more than I expected to, so I'm willing to give EW the benefit of the doubt on that one, if on little else during her tenure. Also notable they didn’t transfer the Godwin “Two Gentlemen” anywhere - after it’s initial short run with very positive reviews it disappeared forever. Same with Doran’s recent Cymbeline of course. When he took over he spoke approvingly of the Opera practice of reviving popular productions and keeping them in the repertoire. One of many occasions where he said one thing and did the exact opposite. The Two Gents did get an outing in Newcastle as well as a broadcast. But Godwin should have been nurtured rather than discarded |
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Post by Jan on May 31, 2023 9:18:44 GMT
Also notable they didn’t transfer the Godwin “Two Gentlemen” anywhere - after it’s initial short run with very positive reviews it disappeared forever. Same with Doran’s recent Cymbeline of course. When he took over he spoke approvingly of the Opera practice of reviving popular productions and keeping them in the repertoire. One of many occasions where he said one thing and did the exact opposite. The Two Gents did get an outing in Newcastle as well as a broadcast. But Godwin should have been nurtured rather than discarded I stand corrected. In general though it always looked like Doran had limited commitment to the "lesser" repertoire - under another AD Doran directed Timon in the RST and Barbican but under him as AD he relegated it to a short run in the Swan. Under another AD Doran had a big success directing Henry VIII in the Swan but under him as AD he didn't produce it at all in his "complete " cycle. He even relegated his own production of Troilus to a short run in the Swan despite his initial promise to produce every play in the canon on the main RST stage. |
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Post by David J on May 31, 2023 9:40:12 GMT
The Two Gents did get an outing in Newcastle as well as a broadcast. But Godwin should have been nurtured rather than discarded He even relegated his own production of Troilus to a short run in the Swan despite his initial promise to produce every play in the canon on the main RST stage. That was on the RST stage. You're thinking of King John aren't you |
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Post by Jan on May 31, 2023 10:52:42 GMT
He even relegated his own production of Troilus to a short run in the Swan despite his initial promise to produce every play in the canon on the main RST stage. That was on the RST stage. You're thinking of King John aren't you True. King John. Another one he didn’t produce at all was Pericles. |
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Post by David J on May 31, 2023 13:08:56 GMT
That was on the RST stage. You're thinking of King John aren't you True. King John. Another one he didn’t produce at all was Pericles. That was disappointing. Would love to see a full scale production of Pericles on the RST. Should have seen the National Theatre community production. Still, I bet whatever the RSC could have cooked up could not have exceeded the Dominic Drongoole's brilliant Sam Wanamaker production |
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Post by Jan on May 31, 2023 19:38:54 GMT
True. King John. Another one he didn’t produce at all was Pericles. That was disappointing. Would love to see a full scale production of Pericles on the RST. Should have seen the National Theatre community production. Still, I bet whatever the RSC could have cooked up could not have exceeded the Dominic Drongoole's brilliant Sam Wanamaker production I’ve seen 8 productions of Pericles and they were all good in one way or another, it plays a lot better than you’d imagine from the text and it’s a pity the last RSC production of it was in 2006 - they surely can’t go 20 years without producing it can they ? |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 1, 2023 7:25:49 GMT
www.rsc.org.uk/news/new-season-of-delights-announced-for-winter-2023-24Nice to see that the Box of Delights production is getting a revival after two runs at the Wilton Music Hall. It is rude of the RSC not to acknowledge where the adaptation started. It isn't a new work created for the RSC. One full Shakespeare is hardly satisfactory for the company. But it could have been worse.
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Post by lichtie on Jun 1, 2023 8:26:54 GMT
Given it's her farewell tour, remarkably middle of the road selection from Whyman. Leaving by directing something in the Swan also feels like an appropriate full stop to this era - and at least something about Britten is likely to be more audience pleasing than the things she's crammed in for the current season.
Look forward to BoD (it does mention Wilton's on the production page on the website), and The Fair Maid of the West could be promising too (I enjoyed the P&P (sort of) when it first appeared, less so as it trundled endlessly on - be interesting to see if McArthur goes for the same approach here).
Given how seriously poor R&J was this spring, I'm less concerned by the lack of Shakespeare - let the new ADs start afresh next year.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 1, 2023 9:40:46 GMT
Given it's her farewell tour, remarkably middle of the road selection from Whyman. Leaving by directing something in the Swan also feels like an appropriate full stop to this era - and at least something about Britten is likely to be more audience pleasing than the things she's crammed in for the current season. Look forward to BoD (it does mention Wilton's on the production page on the website), and The Fair Maid of the West could be promising too (I enjoyed the P&P (sort of) when it first appeared, less so as it trundled endlessly on - be interesting to see if McArthur goes for the same approach here). Given how seriously poor R&J was this spring, I'm less concerned by the lack of Shakespeare - let the new ADs start afresh next year. I checked twice for the Wilton bit and perhaps it was a more recent edit. Thinking about the new leadership, if I were them I might be a bit narked to have the most commercial Shakespeare comedy done as part of Whyman's farewell. Means they can't stage that banker for a few seasons. |
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