Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003

Summary

If Shakespeare were still alive to collect performance fees, 2003 would have been a lucrative year for the Bard, with some thirty revivals of his plays staged by major professional companies in England alone: unless, that is, a large part of the plays’ continuing appeal to the cash-strapped theatres of this country lies in the fact that they are safely out of copyright. Had Shakespeare been a current paid-up member of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in 2003, for example, it is quite possible that the Royal Shakespeare Company would have avoided his work altogether. With budgetary shortfalls for once restraining the exuberance even of their designers (except Colin Peters, of whose adventures with As You Like It more later), and with the company’s management still in the uncertain interregnum between Adrian Noble’s Project Fleet (see Survey 55 and 56), and the full assumption of the Artistic Directorship by his successor Michael Boyd, the RSC announced only towards the end of 2003 that it would be performing new plays again (for the first time since 2001) late in the 2004 season. Despite reports in the summer that negotiations towards the establishment of a new London home for the company were on the verge of a successful outcome, and despite the news that the company’s forthcoming Swan productions of All’s Well That Ends Well and Othello would each transfer briefly to the Gielgud in spring 2004, only two RSC shows from its summer 2003 repertory, Gregory Doran’s interlinked revivals of The Taming of the Shrew and Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize; or, The Tamer Tamed will be transferring to London (for a short run at the Queen’s in early spring 2004). The bulk of the company’s 2003 repertoire closed at the end of its late autumn run in Newcastle, never reaching metropolitan audiences at all.