Cash-strapped RSC Seeks London Base & Leader???

According to Newsnight, the cash-strapped Royal Shakespeare Company is poised to ditch all of outgoing artistic director Adrian Noble's most radical changes - although who will be in charge of doing so remains to be seen as nobody wants the job of succeeding him. Last night's edition of the BBC current affairs programme reported that the RSC is an estimated £5 million in the red and that it will be scrapping plans to demolish Stratford's listed Royal Shakespeare Theatre in favour of a modern, £100 million "theatre village". The company also seems to be regretting its expensive withdrawal from Barbican Centre and, deciding that one-off seasons at the Roundhouse and in the West End are a failure, is now seeking another fixed London base; talks apparently took place this week with the Old Vic management. Presumably put off by such a "poisoned chalice", potential artistic director are in increasingly short supply. Newsnight sources claim that popular contenders - including actor Kenneth Branagh, the Almeida's Jonathan Kent, the RSC founder's son Edward Hall, Steven Pimlott and West Yorkshire Playhouse's Jude Kelly - have declined to put their names forward. The most likely remaining contenders appear to be the actor Michael Pennington, a partnership of director John Caird and actor Simon Russell Beale or RSC associates Gregory Doran and Michael Boyd.

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