Adrian Noble's reputation for unilateralism has been his professional tragedy. But, asks Katherine Duncan-Jones, is the RSC board blameless in his downfall?

I am not sure whether Adrian Noble really is a rampant egotist, or whether he just talks like one. The wording of his press release last year, announcing plans to "redevelop" the Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, to withdraw from the Barbican, to close the Other Place, to extend the Royal Shakespeare Company's activities in the US and so on, suggested that these radical decisions were his and his alone. So did the tone of a piece he later wrote in the Guardian (3 October), in which he described these changes as "the bravest, but also the most honest and important that I have made". Indeed, so much did he resemble Coriolanus seeing off the Volscians - "Alone I did it" - that I was astonished when a piece I wrote for the New Statesman (25 June 2001) about his disenchantment with directing Shakespeare was received angrily by Stanley Wells, a vice-chairman of the RSC's board, as a slight on that august body. It never occurred to me that the board had had anything to do with Noble's decisions.

We may never learn whether any members of the board were privy to Noble's plans from the outset, or whether they were simply asked to provide the whitewash. Perhaps a better term here would be "greywash", as the governance of the RSC during the past 12 months has been deeply shadowy. Transparency seems foreign to its deliberations. The public caught a glimpse on the national news of the RSC's presentation to the Commons select committee on culture, on 8 January this year, about the plans to redevelop the theatre in Stratford. It was not reassuring.

The deputation, whose spokesperson was Sinead Cusack, came before a committee, chaired by Gerald Kaufman, to ask the government to pledge millions of our pounds for the construction of the pleasure dome that was to replace the Memorial Theatre. She made the dreadful public relations error of appearing to despise the middle-aged "fogeys" who currently keep the theatre afloat. Hitherto, I have admired Cusack's performances, but, as someone unfortunate enough not to be a laddish young person, I now feel alienated, because it seems that she does not want to reach out to the likes of me. Astonishingly, the representatives of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport were persuaded. Then again, perhaps it is not so surprising. After all, it was new Labour that squandered the people's millions on the Millennium Dome, and is still doing so.

Nearly a year on from the initial announcements, Noble has not lost his habit of suggesting that he and he alone controls the RSC. A signed encyclical accompanied the grim Midsummer Night's Dream that opened at the Memorial Theatre in February, and is now touring. It was as egotistical as ever. Once more, Noble congratulated himself on his "incredibly exciting" vision: "I love the idea that people could arrive in the morning, take part in an education programme, have lunch in a fantastic restaurant, visit a costume exhibition, join a fight or voice workshop, and then, in the evening, see a show."

Do "people" also love this idea, I wonder, of a Shakespearean "show" being just an afterthought to a day's junketing? Has he done any market research? Noble himself seems to have had doubts about his rhetoric here, for he immediately offered reassurance: "But do not worry, throughout all this work we will still be open for business in Stratford." Thanks for that, Adrian!

Noble's letter accompanying the winter season at Stratford also implied that he himself would be around to see all these lovely projects through to their completion "by" 2008. However, on 24 April 2002, he made the surprise announcement that "he" would not be renewing "his" contract beyond March 2003. Once again, his press release offered no suggestion that anyone else, least of all the board, had been consulted beforehand. And once again, the pronoun is striking. I had supposed that a contract by definition involved the agreement of several parties, and could not be renewed unilaterally. And this press release is accompanied not by a resume of the present condition of the RSC, but a copy of Noble's own curriculum vitae, which now seems of little relevance.

As a director, Noble has been most successful with technicolour, in-your-face histories, comedies and musicals. Indeed, the financial success of one such "show", Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, has facilitated his departure from the RSC. Yet on his own behalf he has constructed a tragedy, and it is not surprising if he is now feeling bruised. By speaking and writing as if all the RSC's decisions, recent, present and future, were his and his alone, he has inevitably made himself the sole target of obloquy in the media, especially when projects have gone awry. The current Midsummer Night's Dream got the worst reviews in living memory, and the strenuously Americanised Winter's Tale at the Roundhouse in London is said to be playing to 35 per cent houses. There have been second thoughts about abandoning the Barbican, but understandably the Barbican won't have the RSC back. And the proposed Theatre Village in Stratford was so closely identified with Noble that the board's grey men now have a perfect excuse to abandon it. Yet they themselves are not blameless. Could they not at least have required Noble, last summer, to make no further public announcements that had not been vetted? Or was it their cruel plan all along that he would be their fall guy?

Good things may emerge from Noble's tragedy. It is clear that a single artistic director cannot preside effectively over all the RSC's sprawling fields of operation: Stratford, London, UK touring, overseas touring. Pending retrenchment, a team will be needed. It should be composed of directors who offer diversity yet can be relied on to work harmoniously. One of these ought to be Greg Doran, whose mini-season at the Swan will be this summer's triumph, judging by Eastward Ho! and Edward III. Doran has a solid base of RSC experience, and seems not to object, as Noble did latterly, to working in the provincial Midlands.

Ian McDiarmid and Jonathan Kent, departing from the Almeida, would be excellent. And some women would be a boon. On the strength of recent productions, I would suggest Loveday Ingram and/or Lucy Pitman-Wallace, but there must be many other possibilities. Famous names have been mooted, such as Kenneth Branagh, but celebrity is less important at this point than year-round commitment: the last and decisive act of Noble's tragedy was the "sabbatical" he spent working on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

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