46 replies to this topic

[igb]

xanderl, on 22 August 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

Fascinating, thanks!

Some interesting oddities - for instance 3 productions of H VI part 2 on it's own, and no productions of any of the three between 1905 and the late 70s.

Yeah, I suspect that's because the histories was rolled up into things like "The Plantagenets" and other adaptations.   The script I used to scrape the data off the RSC archive only pulls complete plays by name.  I suppose I could produce a list of all the Henry adaptations and include those as well.

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For your next task - colour code the dots by artistic director

I did a similar job for the Proms a few years ago, and plotted out the rise and fall of various composers (out with Haydn!  In with Shostakovich!).   Some visualisation of what particular directors were doing would be interesting, too.

[igb]

Epicoene, on 22 August 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

What an elitist comment. You are saying a play like that couldn't do 5 nights in a "random British town" (their last such tour was to Newcastle, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Richmond and Bath) whereas such comparitive rarities should be reserved for months-long runs in Stratford ?

Has there ever been a "months-long" run of Henry VIII?  The last time it was in the main house at the RSC was thirty years ago, and it hasn't been produced in any RSC space since 1996.   If the RSC consider it not worth doing a full-scale production of in their base, drawing on their core audience, more than once in a generation, why tour it?  Given that a well-produced (to quote a GCSE set-work staple) Much Ado might only visit Newcastle once a decade, isn't that also important?

[xanderl]

Ah yes, that would explain the scarcity of Henrys and Richards during certain periods.

Love's Labours Lost looks a bit hard done by this century - only two productions, one presumably during the Complete Works, the other was the Tennant one which was only on for a few weeks.

[Epicoene]

igb, on 22 August 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

Given that a well-produced (to quote a GCSE set-work staple) Much Ado might only visit Newcastle once a decade, isn't that also important?

Odd you choose Newcastle, aren't the RSC supposed to transfer all their main-house productions to Newcastle every year ?

Your view resolutely Stratford-centric and elitist - it is fine for the RSC to run Henry VIII for many months in the Swan once a decade but the proles in Bath can't see it at all.

You keep evading my other point, why do you assert that the play itself needs to be popular for these idiot yokels in Richmond to go to see it ? If the casting is strong enough the play is largely irrelevant - otherwise, for example, no new plays would ever get produced in the provinces would they ?

[Honoured Guest]

xanderl, on 22 August 2012 - 02:59 PM, said:

Love's Labours Lost looks a bit hard done by this century - only two productions, one presumably during the Complete Works, the other was the Tennant one which was only on for a few weeks.

Northern Broadsides toured Love's Labours Lost this year for 14 weeks to Newcastle-under-Lyme, Lancaster, Halifax, Scarborough, Buxton, Leeds, Salford and York. Audiences trust the company's Shakespeare productions so risk a little-seen play.

I'd suggest Simon Russell Beale is virtually unknown outside regular South Bank and Stratford audiences. His name would mean nothing to most regional theatre audences.

When the RSC tours, they usually promote the RSC "brand" and not the cast because most "name" London/Stratford stage actors are unknown in the wider world.

The last three RSC visits to Cardiff were Comedy of Errors, Noughts and Crosses (Malorie Blackman) and Days of Significance (Roy Williams). Coriolan/us was last week produced nearby in association with the RSC. The next RSC visit is Julius Caesar. None of these five are Shakespeare's "top hits".

[igb]

Honoured Guest, on 22 August 2012 - 04:28 PM, said:

I'd suggest Simon Russell Beale is virtually unknown outside regular South Bank and Stratford audiences. His name would mean nothing to most regional theatre audences.

Exactly.

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Coriolan/us was last week produced nearby in association with the RSC.

It'd be interesting to know what the RSC's input into it was, though: they only really appeared in the small print in the programme.

Epicoene, on 22 August 2012 - 04:19 PM, said:

Odd you choose Newcastle, aren't the RSC supposed to transfer all their main-house productions to Newcastle every year ?

An interesting question: I was only talking to some Newcastle-based friends about that point yesterday.  Is it written into their ACE contract?

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You keep evading my other point, why do you assert that the play itself needs to be popular for these idiot yokels in Richmond to go to see it ? If the casting is strong enough the play is largely irrelevant - otherwise, for example, no new plays would ever get produced in the provinces would they ?

I thought the usual complaint these days was precisely that almost no new plays are being produced in the provinces.   And if you think that Simon Russell Beale is a "strong enough" name to get people attending minor Shakespeare on the strength of his presence, I suspect you're wrong: there are plenty of tickets for every night of the run of Timon of Athens at the National, and by late October the Olivier is currently barely half-full.

[igb]

I've plotted just the productions that ran in Stratford venues, as a proxy for "one dot per distinct production".  It'll over-represent productions which opened in one house but transferred the following year to another house, such as the Boyd Histories (Swan->Courtyard) or the Mendes R3 (TOP->Swan), but that's  small problem.  It shows the slow periodicity of the less-produced plays quite nicely.  Better quality version here.

[xanderl]

Interesting (again!)

They really need to give Twelfth Night a rest!

[Lynette]

Crumbs igb that's v cool. So the plan should show an evenly spaced pattern of dots if they were doing the plays in a regular sequence. Interesting to note what fashions dictate. The Henry VIs were more or less abanandoned until their  marvellous relatively recent resuscitation.

[xanderl]

One interesting point is that Winters Tale, which is one I complained about them redoing too quickly, has been relatively rarely produced by them over the long term.