Shakespeare at Stratford and the National Theatre, 1979

Summary

The two outstanding Shakespeare productions of 1979 were the RSC Pericles at the Other Place in Stratford and the National Theatre’s As You Like It: both broke new ground. But the main Stratford season was exceptionally uneven, and no neat summary is possible for so very disparate a group of plays and productions as those covered by this article, including the 1978 Antony and Cleopatra which opened too late for review last year.

Even in what he called a 'year of consolidation', Trevor Nunn's ostensibly 'new' Merry Wives of Windsor amounted to little more than a refining and paring down of the previous RSC production by Terry Hands. Production ideas were carried over: children played conkers between scenes; there was a strong contrast between the rural accents of the Windsor citizens and the aristocrats Fenton and Falstaff; the finale in Windsor Forest was a Hallowe'en revel.