David Tennant returns to the RSC to play Richard II

DT as R11
(c) RSC

At a Press Conference in London today, the Royal Shakespeare Company announced its five-year strategy and its Winter 2013 season.  The headline announcement was that David Tennant will return to the RSC to play Richard II in their 2013 Winter Season. The news, though exciting to hear officially, had been circulating for some time.   Richard II will be a short six-week  run in Stratford from 10th October until 16th November.  The production then transfers to the Barbican from 9th December until 25th January 2014.

Looking at reactions to the news on Twitter and other Social Media, the casting news has been very well received and it signals a change of direction from the Michael Boyd years. There was some relish in the announcement that David Tennant would be returning to the RSC, rather than a sense of playing down his celebrity status and attempting to focus on ensemble as a core value.  Clearly there will be anxieties around managing the booking process, the returns’ queue and managing the back stage experience again with Tennant’s return to Stratford, but that does provide the RSC with media stories that they can feed out during the run to keep themselves in the public eye.  The shift from RST to Barbican will mean a move from the thrust stage to the proscenium arch.  There seems to be no desire to want to replicate your theatre in another building here.  In addition, the return to the Barbican reminds me of previous RSC seasons at the Barbican and that the promise of a London home might be closer.  However, I am not so fixated on the London home because I have to travel a distance to both Stratford and London, though I am aware this will be good news for others.

Another announcement today was that Shakespeare’s plays won’t go on in the Swan for the immediate future.  Instead the Swan will be the home for Shakespeare’s Contemporaries.  This sounds like an exciting plan, and I look forward to future Swan productions, but as King John and Richard III were such a success last year, I was hoping for one or two Shakespeare productions in the Swan.  Indeed, I had hoped that maybe Richard II would have gone into the Swan.  It would work so well in the small intimate space.  Though the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is supposed to be an intimate space, I sometimes feel dwarfed by the height of the stage, and its size, especially when it is over busy as in the Shipwreck season.

Furthermore, Greg Doran also announced that  as part of  his five-year strategy was to do the whole canon in five years. Will I finally get to see Two Noble Kinsmen at the RSC?  It’s the last of my complete works.

Further Information RSC Press release

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Looking forward to Shakespeare in 2013

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2013 will be another year for celebrity Shakespeare. James McAvoy will play Macbeth early in the year. The Michael Grandage season continues with David Walliams and Sheridan Smith staring in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jude Law in Henry V.  In autumn, at the Old Vic,  Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones will be playing Beatrice and Bendick in Much Ado About Nothing.  Yet to go on sale, but not a surprise, Adrian Lester will play Othello at the National Theatre.

In Stratford, there are lots to look forward to, particularly the Alex Waldman and Pippa Nixon reunion in As You Like It and again in Hamlet with Jonathan Slinger in the title role.  Joining As You Like It and Hamlet on the RST main stage will be All’s Well that End’s Well, and in the Swan theatre there is a Titus Andronicus.

At the Globe, I’m looking forward to The Tempest, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The RSC and the Globe are bringing their Shakespeare  to York with The Winter’s Tale and  a Henry VI season.

There has been a taste for concept Shakespeare recently. The Wyndham’s Much Ado About Nothing and Rupert Goold’s The Merchant of Venice split audiences and the critics, but were very interesting interpretations. Will 2013 bring another surprise?  It looks like the Globe will continue with its original practice approach, and there is talk that the RSC Hamlet might return to renaissance dress.

With most of the summer and autumn mapped out, I am waiting with anticipation, and excitement, for the announcement of Greg Doran’s first season as artistic director of the RSC.  What will be the RSC’s winter season be like?  I doubt we’ll see another long ensemble project, but I think we’ll see the return of the ‘celebrity’ actor to the RSC. I’m sure we’ll know soon.

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2012

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2012 was the year that I kept thinking, I will blog about that and then never got round to it.  I always wanted to write some longer pieces on some of the productions, but I put it off, because I am working on a larger project that is taking up my time at the moment.  I will have to do better in 2013.  It was a year that we were warned to stay away from London, to avoid  transport chaos during the Olympics.  I don’t think tube delays happened, but I spent most of the summer in Stratford instead of London this year.

The highlight of the year for me was the RSC’s King John and Alex Waldmann’s death scene as he dances to a slightly speeded up Frankie Valli’s ‘Beggin”.  I really enjoyed the wedding scene and the night I sang ‘Say a Little Prayer’ with King John was something I will remember for a long time to come.  I have decided that the RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing ends up as my second highlight of 2012 .  I toyed with a joint second with the RSC’s Richard III, but in the end I think Much Ado just nudged ahead because it ended up summing up my summer for me.  I saw it one last time in London, and  the music, colours and ensemble performances had stuck in my mind.

Though the RSC’s Richard III was my third highlight, of course, this was also Jonjo O’Neill’s year.  Firstly, in Richard III and then in The Effect with Billie Piper.  The Effect gets my top spot in the theatre (other than Shakespeare) section. It was a lovely structured play and the two central performances were just great.  The best moment  in The Effect was Jonjo’s tap dance.  I saw Richard III so many times and got to know it well.  I also saw it grow and develop over the year.  it was a funny and clear production, and Jonjo was the master showman, a perfect Richard.

The RSC wasn’t all good.  The shipwreck season was very much a disappointment and Troilus and Cressida – well what can say further about it other than what I blogged in August?

As the summer was ending, I caught the original practice productions at  Richard III and Twelfth Night at The Globe.  I had really enjoyed the Globe’s Taming of the Shrew, mainly because Jamie Beamish was in it.

There are several Royal Court productions in my top theatre section including In Basildon which was very close to the top of my theatre list.

I saw a few exhibitions and paid many visits to the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum.  I really enjoyed the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain, and will visit at least one more time before it closes.

Here’s my top lists for 2012:

Shakespeare

1.King John (RSC, The Swan)

2. Much Ado About Nothing RSC, Noel Coward and The Courtyard).

3. Richard III  (RSC, The Swan)

4. Taming of the Shrew (RSC, RST).

5. Julius Caesar (RSC, Theatre Royal Newcastle)

6. Richard III (The Globe)

7.The Winter’s Tale (Propeller, Lyceum, Sheffield)

8. Twelfth Night (The Globe)

9. Timon of Athens (National Theatre)

10. Taming of the Shrew (The Globe)

11. Macbeth (Sheffield Crucible)

12. Henry V (Propeller, Lowry Salford)

13. Henry V (The Globe)

14. Antony and Cleopatra (Oyun Atölyesi company, The Globe)

15. Measure for Measure (RSC, RST)

16. Love Labour’s Lost (Northern Broadsides, The Dukes & York Theatre Royal)

17. Twelfth Night (RSC, RST)

18. The Tempest (RSC, RST)

19. Troilus and Cressida (RSC/Wooster Group, The Swan)

20. The Comedy of Errors (RSC, RST)

Theatre 

1. The Effect (National Theatre)

2. In Basildon (Royal Court)

3. Posh (Royal Court in the West End, Duke of York)

4. She Stoops to Conquer (National Theatre)

5. The Recruiting Officer (Donmar)

6. The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic)

7. Jumpy (Royal Court in the West End, Duke of York)

8.  A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) (Dmitry Krymov’s company RSC)

9.  Hero (The Royal Court)

10. Hedda Gabler (The Old Vic)

11. Miss Julie (Manchester, Royal Exchange)

12. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (West Yorkshire Playhouse)

13. The Judas Kiss (Hampshire)

14. The Physicists (Donmar)

15. Three Sisters (The Young Vic)

16. The Changeling (The Young Vic)

17.  People (National Theatre)

18. Steptoe and Son (Kneehigh, West Yorkshire Playhouse)

19. Blackta (Young Vic)

20. Privates on Parade (Michael Grandage Company, The Noel Coward Theatre)

Exhibitions

1. Pre–Raphaelites (Tate Britain)

2. Shakespeare: staging the world (British Museum)

3. Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed (Royal Academy)

4. David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture (Royal Academy)

5. Lucien Freud (Portraits)

6.  Munch: The promise of modernity

7. Damien Hirst (Tate Modern)

8. Bronze (Royal Academy)

9. Someday all the Adults will die (Haywood Gallery)

10. Edward Munch (The Modern Eye) (Tate Modern)

11. Turner Prize 2012

12. The Lost Prince (National Portrait Gallery)

13. Picasso and Modern British Art (Tate Britain)

14. Hajj: Journey into the Heart of Islam (British Museum)

15. Yavoi Kusama (Tate Modern)

16. Royal Academy Summer Show

17. A Bigger Splash. Painting after Performance. (Tate Modern)

18. The Queen (National Portrait Gallery)

19. John Martin (at the Tate Britain for the few days that it was still open in Jan 2012, but this was my highlight of 2011).

20. William Klein + Daido Moriyama (Tate Modern).

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The Taming of the Shrew (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, w/c 23rd January 2012)

The set was a bed.

Indeed, the set really grabbed my attention when I walked into the RST. As I sat on the front row, I had to strain my neck to see over the stage, because the bed made the stage, which is high anyway, much higher.

It’s was a bold move to turn the thrust stage into a bed and in many ways this worked very well.  In the programme, the director, Lucy Bailey said that she wanted her overall concept to be about sleeping, sex and dreams.  This clearly signalled what we could expect from this production.

This production was framed by the Christopher Sly scenes, and Sly (Nick Holder) was on stage for most of the play.  Some of the fun was around him loosing  his pants, and this added a slapstick element to a very dark comedy.  In framing the play, the play itself becomes a wish fulfilment, and clearly Sly’s perception.

The production itself was an alcohol fuelled night on the town. Kate (Lisa Dillon) was sick over Petruchio (David Caves) and wet herself on stage.  It was behaviour that Petruchio seems to relish, and there was a reminder of those documentaries about drunken nights out in the cities of the UK.  If the chemistry was missing between Isabella and Angelo playing in the Swan at the same time, there was lots of chemistry between the Kate and Petruchio.  The audience sees Petruchio’s reaction to Kate when he first sees her and her clearly finds her attractive.  However, at the end of the play, I wasn’t sure whether their relationship would last.  I was reminded of Kate’s first entrance where she looked to be repentant, but as she threw off the brace, she fights back, showing her anger at her treatment.  Maybe once the test is over, she will do this again.

I loved this production.  It was thoughtful, funny and entertaining.

Reviews and Previews

The Stage / Reviews / The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew, RST – review | Theatre
The Taming of the Shrew, RSC, review – Telegraph
The Taming of the Shrew – review | Culture | The Guardian
The Taming of the Shrew: ‘This is not a woman being crushed’ | Stage | The Guardian
Other Blogs
Margate Sands

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Heart of Robin Hood (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 6th January 2012)

The Heart of Robin Hood took a different twist on the traditional story, but this approach isn’t new and so having a strong Marian and wayward Robin was not a surprise. There were some good things.  For example, I really liked the way the actors presented animals using musical instruments.  The problem I had with the production overall was that I just felt that  because they could, they did. It felt that because actors could slide down from the back of the stage, enter from any part of the audience,  drop down traps, or descend down from the flies, then in this production they did it.  It felt like everything was piled on and the spectacle was a little over done.  I found that very early on in the evening,  the novelty of it all just wore off and actually a production that played on surprise ended  up revealing all its surprises at the beginning, and there was little left for the finale.

Marion was very much a modern girl, introduced to us in her night-clothes and Robin Hood a bit of a selfish thug to start with.   Heart of Robin Hood was a Christmas show and it was a pantomime.  It was energetic and funny, and it was also gruesome at times.

Martin Hutson’s Prince John was the highlight for me. He didn’t have the conventional villain looks, but he managed to portray such badness, it was chilling at times.

It was nice to catch the last night of the Christmas lights on a mild January night in Stratford, and enjoy a night at the theatre, but I am looking forward to seeing some more Shakespeare again.

Blogs

There Ought to be Clowns

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