RSC Revisits Roundhouse, London Home on Hold
The Royal Shakespeare Company will return to the Roundhouse, where it had a sell-out hit last spring with The Histories, for ten weeks from December 2010 with its current long-term ensemble of actors. Programme details for the new London season won’t be announced until next April, but it will include at least eight productions from the RSC repertoire in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Even with all that happening, at a press briefing held today in London (See Today’s Other News), RSC artistic director Michael Boyd admitted that “it’s not enough” and that finding a permanent home for the company in the capital remains a “frustrating”, “complicated” and unresolved matter. However, it’s a matter that won’t start to be tackled for at least another two years, until 2011, and only then if and when the RSC have completed the fundraising and organising required to reopen its two rebuilt Stratford venues.
The RSC has not had a base in London since its 2001 withdrawal from the Barbican Centre, its purpose-built second home for two decades (See News, 25 May 2001). Speaking today, Boyd said that there are few if any suitable existing theatres in London for the company to function from permanently. The “most likely” solution will be a found space and the “least likely” is a new build from scratch.
Three major milestones
Meanwhile, the £112.8 million redevelopment of the listed Royal Shakespeare Theatre continues “on time and on budget”. The new theatre, with its specially designed thrust stage auditorium, will begin to open to the public, with a gradual series of activities, one-off events, short runs and galas from November 2010 ahead of a return to full performances in both the RST and the simultaneously reopened and connected Swan Theatre from February 2011.
Having recently toured the construction site, Boyd told journalists: “I hate hyperbole, but I’m almost prepared to say it (the RST) is going to be the best theatre in the world, especially for Shakespeare.”
Artist’s impression of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, by Hayes Davidson
The company must still raise £10 million towards the overall cost of the project, which executive director Vikki Heywood said today, is coming in, albeit more slowly than originally hoped due to the current economic climate.
Next year’s building unveilings will also coincide with the 50th anniversary of the RSC. No details have yet been announced for festivities, but Boyd promised that the anniversary programme will include numerous “revivals of the RSC’s greatest hits, readdressed in a new way” by the company’s current creative team.
Then, fast on the golden anniversary’s heels, in 2012, the RSC will spearhead the World Shakespeare Festival as part of the UK’s Cultural Olympiad running alongside the London Olympics. The WSF is being organised by the same team behind the year-long Complete Works Festival, which saw the bard’s entire canon staged together for the first time in Stratford in 2006/7 (See News, 5 Apr 2007). It will include myriad collaborations with international companies as well as am-dram groups in the UK.
Facts & figures
Today’s briefing coincides with the publication of the RSC’s 2008/9 Annual Report, which will be presented at its AGM on Friday. Despite operating for a second full year just one performance space in Stratford, the RSC remains in the black having sold 532,764 tickets and taken £11.2 million at the box office (up £2 million on last year), as part of an overall income of £31.3 million for the financial year ended 30 March 2009. Its 20 productions played to 85% capacity overall (and 90% in Stratford), with 19% of the audience first-time bookers.
The year included two RSC offerings hailed as the “theatrical event of the year” – the eight-play Histories and the David Tennant-led Hamlet. The former received eight major awards including the new Olivier for Best Company Performance and amongst the latter’s four prizes was the Whatsonstage.com Award for Theatre Event of the Year.
The RSC results come in the wake of similar reports for the National Theatre (which achieved 93% capacity in 2008/9) and the Donmar Warehouse (which played to 98% full houses for its year-long Donmar West End season). Asked today whether the RSC could ever achieve similar figures, Boyd said that he’d “like to be 95% but we’re not going to be a slave to it”, because that could lead to less “courageous” work. If the company ever dipped below 80%, he said, then he’d be worried.
Amongst the other initiatives announced today are a new RSC Studio pilot programme to develop new work in Stratford and London, and an expansion of the Young People’s Shakespeare programme, including a new redacted version of Hamlet, directed by playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.
