Shakespeare Performances in England, 2001

Summary

The year 2001 has been eventful for the Shakespearian theatre in England, and despite some strong productions which are likely to influence views of their respective plays for some time to come -notably the RSC’s Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the RNT’s The Winter’s Tale in the Olivier – it has been on the whole a rather depressing one. The terrorist attacks of September 11th – which had a side-effect of galvanizing the casts and audiences of the RSC’s Hamlet and King John, bringing an unwelcome but energizing topicality to those public discussions of bereavement and vengeance – all but halted the flow of the American tourists who can normally be relied upon to subsidize Shakespearian productions in London and Stratford, and with many companies who revived Shakespeare plays for the millennial year of 2000 now unable to afford such large-cast extravagance for some time to come, there is less Shakespeare on offer in the English professional theatre in the autumn of 2001 than I for one can remember. In the whole of greater London, for example, there’s a low-budget RSC Merchant of Venice about to leave the Pit on a provincial tour, a fringe Taming of the Shrew in a basement near King’s Cross Station, and a small-cast Richard III at the Drayton Court theatre in West Ealing, but otherwise nothing.