When I first heard a rumour from a Stratford landlady in 1999 that the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company had plans to demolish the Memorial Theatre, I assumed this was a leg-pull. Deciding to demolish a theatre after a few (I fear well-deserved) bad reviews of recent productions seemed just like the kind of response that gave the Roman emperors a bad name. At the same Stratford B&B, I also heard that there were plans to abandon the March-December repertory season in Stratford's three theatres, which the landlady feared would have a devastating impact on the town's tourist economy. That, also, seemed too awful to contemplate - yet has now happened, to some extent. Short and oddly scheduled runs in 2000 and 2001 must have alienated many of those overseas visitors who need to make their plans and book their flights some months ahead. Local Midlands audiences, in my experience very loyal, also have cause for disappointment. For instance, Michael Boyd's Richard III, completing the brilliant Henry VI-Richard III tetralogy, played for a bare ten days in Stratford before moving to the greener pastures of Ann Arbor, USA.
It seems that the RSC's artistic director, Adrian Noble, became bored with directing Shakespeare a few years ago - indeed, he has pretty much said so. Now he seems also to have got bored both with the Stratford theatres and with London's Barbican spaces. I am sorry for him, yet, I must confess, not all that sympathetic. I feel that he's behaving rather like the embittered Prospero when he responds to Miranda's exclamation "O brave new world/That has such people in't!" with the nasty putdown "'Tis new to thee".
There are huge numbers of enthusiastic playgoers "out there" who are by no means weary either of Shakespeare's plays or of "Shakespeare country", and for whom both are indeed still brave new worlds. Incidentally, the extent to which the Barbican, too, is "Shakespeare country" has never been sufficiently highlighted. Two of the most thrilling features of the site are the chance to glimpse street names deeply familiar to Shakespeare (including Silver Street, where he lodged) and, more substantially, to visit the wonderful Museum of London. And as for Stratford - about the only public utterance by Tony Blair to which my bosom has ever responded was when, at the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, he reminded us that we could still visit Stratford. Despite all the tourist tat, it still has much to recommend it. The Guild Chapel, just opposite the site of Shakespeare's New Place, is quiet and mysterious; Holy Trinity Church is little changed; the colourfully refurbished birthplace is now very well worth visiting, as is the Swan's theatre museum; and, yes, some of the RSC's current productions can be warmly recommended.
Bringing in "star" performers, mostly from the US, and all for short runs, seems to me simply the wrong strategy. As the best of the "This England" cycle has shown, the RSC can do very well indeed without "stars", or by using young performers whose stardom is yet to come. There can have been few Shakespeare productions - or theatre productions of any kind - more talked about with excitement in the media than the great Wars of the Roses sequence. Yet this was a triumph not at all of "stars", but entirely of ensemble playing, energetic movement and assured verse-speaking, all traditional RSC strengths. The same goes for John Barton's Tantalus - never shown in Stratford - where we could not even see the actors' faces. All that was wrong with both of these theatrical marathons was that they closed much too soon, leaving many potential spectators disappointed. These were undisputed artistic triumphs as well as being, to use an Adrian Noble word, "sexy". Meanwhile, there has been some ill-advised messing about in the Memorial Theatre. The circular thrust stage, introduced in the millennial season, contributed much to the success of (for instance) that season's Othello. The latest refit seems perverse and pointless, as well as financially prodigal, if the building is indeed fingered for "redevelopment" subject to funding.
The RSC could work better to maximise its recent strengths. When the Swan opened, we were promised that this would be the space where we could see rarely performed plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, as well as underperformed plays by Shakespeare himself. When this is done confidently, as in this season's excellent King John, it almost always works. For instance, I have never seen a Ben Jonson there that was not top-notch. The 1995 Devil Is An Ass, for example, was a real eye-opener, which - eyes wide open - I saw three times. Now that Tantalus and the Henriads are finished, I can think of many other ways in which groups of closely connected plays could be staged in Stratford's three houses, no doubt with London follow-ons.
First - since the RSC likes to venture a musical now and then - how about Kiss Me Kate in the main house, The Taming of the Shrew in the Swan, and a newly commissioned feminist take on wife-taming in The Other Place? Or, again, how about Hamlet in the main house - only let it be a pacy, colourful, entertaining Hamlet, unlike this summer's grey and tedious affair - with John Marston's very closely connected Antonio's Revenge at the Swan and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at The Other Place? The possibilities are almost endless.
And why not, for instance, adopt a much bolder approach to cross-gender casting, rather than just wedging in the odd unhappy-looking female spear-carrier? The Victorians enjoyed productions of Romeo and Juliet with both title roles played by women; why shouldn't we? Why not persuade Stoppard to do a stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love, perhaps accompanied by one of No Bed for Bacon and, say, Shaw's Dark Lady of the Sonnets, with one or two of the other playlets about the sonnets? Above all, why not go all out for plenty more of the energy, colour and excitement that distinguished both Noble's Plantagenets in 1989 and Michael Boyd's Wars of the Roses this season, while also constructing coherent programmes that will make audiences want to book for all items, whether in Stratford or London? That way, the RSC should soon have international stars - directors as well as actors - going down on bended knee to get in on the action.
