Shakespeare Performances in England, 2007

Summary

Whatever other side-effects it may have had, the impending collapse of the British economy caused by the fetchingly titled Great Credit Squeeze of 2007 had still, by December, failed to discourage the nation’s theatre companies from continuing to mount an impressive and expensive range of productions of Shakespeare. In fact in one instance the poor financial outlook may even have brought one Shakespeare play more onto the boards: with the autumn news bulletins full of predictions about rising numbers of bankruptcies and repossessions, the Globe were moved to announce that their 2008 season would include their first-ever production of Timon of Athens, a play which by the time it opens is likely to look very topical indeed. What ought to have been the most conspicuous tranche of productions in 2007, however, the last four months of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival, in the event concluded with what in terms of publicity at least was a whimper rather than a bang. The year-long project to stage or host productions of each of Shakespeare’s plays between April 2006 and April 2007 had been scheduled to culminate with the opening of Trevor Nunn’s King Lear at the Courtyard Theatre on 3 April, with Sir Ian McKellen in the title role, but when Frances Barber, cast as Goneril, damaged her ankle in a cycling accident late in rehearsals the company, although they cancelled no performances, decided to postpone the press night. The result was that several thousand people had already seen the show before anyone in the media was allowed to say what it was like, some weeks of excellent work by Barber’s understudy Melanie Jessop went compulsorily unsung, and any number of projected features in the Sunday newspapers and on the BBC’s arts programmes that had planned to combine an account of McKellen’s Lear with a retrospective look at the entire festival were never published or broadcast.