Out on the Heath, Storm Still Raging
By ALAN RIDING

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England — The Royal Shakespeare Company, Britain's best-known theater troupe, is, like King Lear, buffeted, homeless and feeling unloved. Average attendance at its productions has fallen below 70 percent of capacity, contributing to a $4.4 million debt. It is without a London theater, having abandoned its longtime home. And while a plan to tear down and replace the Royal Shakespeare Theater here is on hold, the company's proposed $165 million redevelopment plan is still viewed with deep suspicion by residents and the theater world. An 18-month interregnum has added to the uncertainty. Blamed for the crisis, Adrian Noble announced in April 2002 that he would step down after 12 years as the company's artistic director. Michael Boyd, an associate director here since 1996, was named as his successor and took over in April. It is only now, eight months into his job, that Mr. Boyd has indicated how he hopes to sort out the mess, though he has yet to persuade theater-world skeptics that he can turn things around.

Sipping coffee in his sparse office overlooking the theater gardens by the River Avon, he had much to muse upon. As a manager he must wipe out the deficit, define the fate of the Stratford playhouse and, most urgently, find a London theater where he can showcase new productions. As artistic director he must also revive morale within the troupe, promote a daring and experimental approach to Shakespeare and rebuild the company's reputation as the cradle of English stage talent.

Still, on matters of art, Mr. Boyd is convinced that the future lies in the past. He said he believed that the company prospered for two decades after Peter Hall founded it in 1960 by retaining a semipermanent ensemble of actors, many of whom used the company as a springboard for success on the stage and the screen. Mr. Boyd has opted for a similar strategy and will test it during his first full season next year.

"It is based on the very old-fashioned belief that sustained collaborative work can produce theater of more lasting value, of more profound values, than any other way of working," he said. "I believe that with a core ensemble of around 40, I can provide rigorous, exciting training for everybody, including the old lags who still want to learn."

For the 2004 season Mr. Boyd plans to create two ensembles, one to work on four Shakespearean tragedies in the main 1,300-seat theater here — "Macbeth," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "King Lear" — and a smaller ensemble for a Spanish Golden Age season at the adjacent 400-seat Swan Theater, comprising plays by Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega and Cervantes.

The old ensemble system, though, broke down for good reason. With television and movies offering actors better pay and higher visibility, few were willing to make a long-term commitment to the company. Older actors, particularly married ones, were reluctant to spend two or three years in Stratford. Drama school graduates, in a hurry to make their names, no longer viewed the Royal Shakespeare Company as the ultimate finishing school.

But Mr. Boyd said he thought that changing times favored a return to an ensemble system. With drama being driven off British television by reality shows, and few British movies finding distributors, he sensed that the theater was recovering prestige and that actors of all ages might again be attracted by an intense engagement with the stage.

The ensemble method, he said, engages actors in a profound exploration of the play, gives them ample time to learn and experiment, and even assures that understudies have stage appearances.

"It doesn't have to be quite as brown rice as Peter Brook," Mr. Boyd said with a laugh, referring to Mr. Brook's collegial approach to directing, "but I believe actors are increasingly looking for this to happen at least once in their lives. It's almost a spiritual thing, a spiritual rediscovery."

Ensemble members would also benefit from extended rehearsal periods — as long as 12 weeks for "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet" — and would be encouraged to remain in the company. "The aim is to create a sustained, rolling ensemble that starts to retain its repertory from year to year," Mr. Boyd said. "It may lose 15 percent of its members each year, but new people will pick up parts from earlier productions."

Mr. Boyd is all too aware, however, that actors want to be seen in London, and that London theatergoers want to see Stratford's best shows. London exposure occurred until 1995, when Mr. Noble cut the company's season at the Barbican Center in East London to six months. And in 2001 he abandoned the center, hoping to draw bigger stars and larger audiences to West End theaters. Instead, even good productions often failed to make it to the West End.

Two acclaimed productions from this summer's season, "The Taming of the Shrew" and John Fletcher's "Tamer Tamed," both directed by Gregory Doran, will be presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington from Dec. 13 through Jan. 4. But neither will play in London.

Mr. Boyd, however, has achieved one coup for this winter. He has persuaded Dame Judi Dench, a former company member who became a vocal critic of Mr. Noble's management, to appear here as the Countess of Rousillon in "All's Well That Ends Well." But "All's Well" is the only new company production that has been guaranteed a London theater so far. Mr. Boyd knows his reputation will be badly bruised if next year's four tragedies do not transfer to London. In November he was grilled by a committee of the London Assembly, a legislature without much power, about the company's absence from the city today.

"I'd like us to find an existing theater in the middle of London, easily accessible by transport, that we can make our own, that we can tame, that we can play with and create our own particular stake, not as anonymous guests," he said, noting that he was negotiating with theater owners. "For us to be in the same place for the next four years would be manna from heaven for our London audience."

The view beyond four years depends on the much-vaunted redevelopment plan for Stratford. Mr. Boyd refused to be drawn into discussing how much would be retained of Mr. Noble's controversial plan to replace the Royal Shakespeare Theater and create a "theater village" by the Avon. At the very least, he said, the theater's stage must be redesigned to bring it closer to the audience. And any London home would have to be compatible with the solution adopted here.

Mr. Boyd, 48, has one advantage over his predecessors Mr. Hall, Trevor Nunn, Terry Hands and Mr. Noble: he is the only one to have previously run a theater. He worked for several years at the Crucible Theater in Coventry, and in 1985 he founded the small Tron Theater in Glasgow, which he directed for 11 years. He also assumed responsibility for the Royal Shakespeare Company's annual monthlong season in Newcastle.

On the other hand, though Mr. Boyd was won over to Shakespeare as a student at Edinburgh University in the 1970's, he does not have extensive experience directing Shakespeare. Since coming here, he has directed "Measure for Measure" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," although he is best remembered for presenting Shakespeare's first tetralogy, "Henry VI, Parts I, II and III" and "Richard III." He will also direct Toby Stephens in "Hamlet" next year.

He said he believed that the best way to make Shakespeare relevant to today's audiences was to approach each play "as if for the first time, unaware of any tradition."

When interviewed for the post of artistic director last year, Mr. Boyd told the company's board, "Idealism is the only way out." As he begins a five-year contract, he said he hoped to demonstrate that. "At a time that theater is trotting behind film and television," Mr. Boyd said, "I think it takes something of the critical mass of the R.S.C. to walk in the opposite direction."

The New York Times
Diciembre - 2003