RSC Peeved by Press Night Clashes???

Speaking of the Royal Shakespeare Company, in case you hadn’t noticed, its most ambitious ever project, the Complete Works Festival, launches next month (See News, 8 Feb 2006). Running from April 2006 to April 2007 in Stratford-upon-Avon, the year-long celebration of the RSC’s “house playwright” – featuring 23 new RSC productions as well as 14 productions from visiting UK companies and 17 from international companies - marks the first time that all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems will be staged at the same event. Unfortunately, some of the powers-that-be in the West End seem not to have paid too close attention. Despite the RSC’s months of planning, two big West End openings have been scheduled against the company’s own first two Complete Works productions. The producers of Billy Joel-Twyla Tharp dance musical Movin' Out have already pulled forward their press performance by eight days so first-string critics no longer need to worry about not being available to get up to Stratford on 18 April for the RSC’s Romeo and Juliet (See News, 24 Feb 2006). As it currently stands, though, the next night critics will have to choose between the RSC’s Antony and Cleopatra, starring Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter, and Peter Hall’s West End revival of Hay Fever, starring Judi Dench (See News, 25 Jan 2006). Dench – who, after the Noel Coward comedy, will head to Stratford to appear in a musical version of The Merry Wives of Windsor for the Complete Works (See News, 11 Jul 2005) – has apparently been lobbying hard to get her West End press performance changed. Meanwhile, the RSC is pushing for the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) to better coordinate the press night diary it oversees for its members with major out-of-town openings.

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