Shakespeare Performances in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, 1981–2

Summary

These have been two years of transition for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and awkward ones at that. Three circumstances combined to make things difficult. The company's London home moved, in June 1982, from the Aldwych and The Warehouse to the Barbican Theatre and The Pit. Several young directors were learning to use the main stage at Stratford. And all the work lay under the long shadow of a hit production which had nothing to do with Shakespeare. After the extraordinary success of Nicholas Nickleby, Ken Campbell renamed its creators the Royal Dickens Company. At times it looked as if the joke had been taken to heart.

The ensemble manner, the musical punctuation and, on occasion, the Victorian decor of Nicholas Nickleby all reappeared. Henry IV was played on a larger version of its set and, appropriately enough, echoed its crowd effects to evoke the low life of medieval London. King Lear borrowed its striking Fool and many of its spectacular tricks from the nineteenth-century popular theatre. Even Macbeth, otherwise studiously ahistorical in setting, brought on a Victorian doctor for the sleep-walking scene.