Awaking Your Faith

The appointment in August 2002 of Michael Boyd as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in succession to Adrian Noble marks the opening of a new chapter in the company's fortunes. It follows upon a troubled period during which plans for change in the way the company operates, and for rebuilding, have proved extremely contentious. Much acrimonious criticism has been directed at Adrian Noble, at some of his executive colleagues, and at the RSC's governing body. Some of this was based on press releases emanating from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, more of it on rumor, gossip, and conjecture. Much of the criticism was made before plans for the 2002 season were announced, and many opponents of the supposed schemes stuck to their objections even after they were proved wrong.

In this piece I hope to maintain an objective point of view, to give a balanced account of the proposals and of reactions to them. I am, I have to declare, not an impartial observer. I have been a member of the RSC's board of governors for many years, have served on a variety of the organization's committees, and am currently vice-chairman of the board. To this extent I might be regarded as inevitably prejudiced in favor of the changes for which that board is ultimately responsible. On the other hand, I have attended the company's performances for well over forty years, I have written a lot about them, I have a scholarly stake in the work of the company, and I have as much reason as the next person to be nostalgic about the buildings and about what has gone on in them.

Proposals for change fall into two main categories: changes to the operating model and to the buildings themselves. I will try to deal with each in turn, though as they are to some extent interrelated, there will of necessity be a degree of overlap.

First come changes to the operating model—that is, to what goes on, where it goes on, and how it is programmed. In recent years the norm has been a single company based initially in Stratford, working in the three theaters there—the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Swan, and the Other Place—from April to October, then moving on to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a residency of up to two months, and then transferring to the Barbican in London. Much criticism has complained of an intention to abandon an ensemble system, but the statement that all the work was done by a single company has to be flexibly interpreted; it has been common, for instance, for actors to perform in only one or two of the three Stratford theaters, and some have appeared in only one play. In the 2001 season, for example, Nicholas Woodeson played only Garrick in Peter Barnes's play The Jubilee; before that Philip Voss gave Shylock and Malvolio only in the main house, just as Robert Stephens had given Falstaff and Lear. Occasional productions, such as the Ninagawa Lear, have opened elsewhere—in this case, Tokyo followed by London, then Stratford. Some—including the Ninagawa—have been given by a company whose actors have performed no other plays during that season. Other examples of plays performed by a company with no other responsibilities have been Adrian Noble's Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh, Declan Donellan's School for Scandal, and Noble's Macbeth with Derek Jacobi. No one has denied that they were still RSC productions. Some plays, especially modern ones, have been given only in London. Not every production even among those originating in Stratford has been seen in Stratford, Newcastle, and London. Some ensembles have been recruited mainly to tour, perhaps with no more than one or two plays. Some of the company's less-successful productions have been dropped after their initial Stratford run. And there have been problems in London because, whereas it has been relatively easy to transfer main-house productions to the main stage at the Barbican...