Essentials:
- What: Acting company and theatre complex devoted to Shakespeare, classics,challenging modern plays
- Where:Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, near the town center
- Website
- Box Office
- Telephone hotline: 011 44 1789 403434 (from the USA) or 0870 609 1110 (in the UK)
- Book online
- In person: from 9:30a.m to 8p.m. in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) foyer, Monday to Saturday, to 6p.m. when the theater is dark.
- Ticket prices: From £5 to about £40 depending upon the production and the venue.Discount tickets are available for:
- seniors over 60
- students
- under 30s
- Unemployed
- school and college groups
- families
- RSC members
- disabled
The Bottom Line:
Quite simply the most interesting, and often the best, productions of Shakespeare you may ever see. If you like theatre but have never understood the appeal of Shakespeare off the page, this will make a convert of you.About the Royal Shakespeare Theatre:
The company's roots date to 1875 when local brewer, Charles Edward Flower, launched a campaign for a theatre in Shakespeare's birthplace and donated a two-acre, riverside site. The first theatre, a Victorian Gothic building, was destroyed by fire in the 1920s but its shell still forms part of the modern theaterThe company received a Royal Charter in 1925 and, after the fire, performed in a cinema until the new Shakespere Memorial Theatre opened in 1932.
In the 1960s, Sir Peter Hall founded the modern Royal Shakespeare Company and the theater was renamed the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
The Company - Who's Who at the RSC:
The company has attracted Britain's theatre royalty since it began accumulating critical praise after WWII. In the early days, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Vivien Leigh played alongside up and coming young unknowns like Richard Burton.Today Judy Dench, Ian Richardson, Janet Suzman and Ian McKellen, along with a host of distinguished character actors, perform with the next generation of newcomers hoping for a breakthrough.
Since Hall, notable directors include Trevor Nunn, Terry Hands and Adrian Noble. Michael Boyd took over the reins in 2003.
The Theatres:
- The RST (RST) has been the main stage since 1932. In April 2007, it was scheduled to close for 3 years to install the latest theatre technology.
- The Courtyard Theatre, across the road, is the company's new and temporary home, during works. When construction ends, it will revert to a studio theatre, called The Other Place.
- The Swan, built in the shell of the original 1879 theatre, is a modern version of an Elizabethan theatre. Because of a shared lobby, it will close in August 2007 during works on the RST.
- Other venues and outdoor spaces around Stratford-upon-Avon will house productions during the modernization.
Shakespeare for the whole family:
The RSC regularly schedules workshops and family events for children as young as five and for young people interested in theatre and theatre literature. Selected matinees are paired with events for the kids - workshops, storytelling, play-in-a-day so that parents can enjoy the play while children have a fun introduction to the world of the same play and its stories. Later, you can all compare your ideas over tea and snacks at the Courtyard Theatre's cafe bar.Simply the best :
If you go to Stratford-upon-Avon without seeing a Royal Shakespeare Company production of one of Shakespeare's plays, as the English say, you are a fool to yourself.The town itself is pretty but often over-praised and over-priced. The RSC on the other hand, won't let you down.
It may challenge your assumptions about Shakespeare though. The company's great strength is that it always regards Shakespeare's works as plays to be performed rather than objects of ancient literature for worship and study.
Forget the po-faced Shakespeare you grew up with
I remember walking out of the theatre after a production of The Merry Wifes of Windsor set in the 1960s. All the wives compared their identical love letters from Falstaff while under the hairdryers in an old fashioned beauty salon. The American woman leaving the theatre ahead of me said,rather testily, "Well, I'm an English teacher and I was never taught that was what Shakespeare was about!" My thought was too bad she missed all the fun.Since those days, I have seen the company create languid magic, in Love's Labours Lost; I've become engrossed in English history that I did not grow up with through Henry V, and this season I've had my heart broken by Ian McKellen's definitive King Lear. And even in the midst of this tragedy, the company's irreverence showed through. Lear's rowdy followers became a bunch of cossacks drunkenly dancing; Lear's fool was played by Sylvester McCoy, an early Dr. Who, in his Dr. Who glad rags and Victorian hat. Why? Well, Why not?
The clearly temporary nature of the Courtyard Theatre (you can smell the plywood), being used until renovations of the RST are finished, adds to the dynamism and excitement of productions.
Stellar casts
For the price of a £5 or £10 ticket, you can see legendary performers in the roles of their careers, Britain's best theatre directors showing off what they can do, and some of the finest character actors in the world. After the play, pop round to the actor's bar, The Dirty Duck, across the road, and you are likely to rub shoulders with the actors you've just seen perform.RSC productions may surprise you, delight you, make you thoughtful or enfuriated, but they will rarely disappoint. Whether you choose to eat, sleep and shop in Stratford-upon-Avon, or to stay in one of the country hotels and B&Bs nearby, don't visit Shakespeare's home town without seeing a modern take on what the old boy got up to during his short life.
