I thought that the RSC’s idea to pair Love’s Labour’s Lost with Much Ado About Nothing was an interesting one, and provided an opportunity to explore the two plays together. The rationale behind this decision was that Much Ado About Nothing must be the lost play, Love’s Labour’s Won, and so the RSC called it’s production of Much…
Read more Much Ado about Love’s Labour’s Lost and Won (RST, September 2014 to March 12th 2015)
Updated 6th January 2013. Thanks to updates from RSC long ensemble audience members. After I saw Debbie Korley and Dharmesh Patel in the RSC’s young people’s King Lear at the Theatre Royal in York recently, I started to wonder what the rest of the RSC’s long ensemble were dong now. I had seen some of…
Read more What happened to the RSC’s long ensemble?
I decided to go to the three new plays at the Hampstead Theatre, as part of the RSC long ensemble project. To do this required some complex travel arrangements and a hit on my budget. I’d been watching this long ensemble for three years, and really wanted to see their final performances together on British…
Read more Little Eagles, Silence, and American Trade (Hampstead Theatre)
The vision behind the RSC Long Ensemble was for a group of actors to work together for a sustained period of time to produce work. It seemed fitting then, at the end of the Stratford run and two and half years together the long ensemble got together and put on a Gala in the newly…
Read more RSC Revealed (The Swan, 27th March 2011)
On the 15th October matinée, Katy Stephens (text in hand) took on the role of Cleopatra in the RSC Antony and Cleopatra when Kathryn Hunter ‘was indisposed’. Though for most of the scenes Katy Stephens held the book in her hand, she only looked at the script now and again to remind herself of odd lines. I felt…
Read more Antony and Cleopatra. Part 2 (Theatre Royal Newcastle, 15th October 2010)
When I saw Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford, I felt that Artistic Director, Michael Boyd’s vision of the RSC ensemble and how it should be put into reality seemed to come to fruition in the production. The house lights are up for most of the production creating a real awareness of the audience watching. The vomitaria are used a lot…
Read more Antony and Cleopatra, Part 1 (The Courtyard Theatre, Theatre Royal Newcastle May to October 2010)