Preface

Summary

This book chronicles the life of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. The Company is in its fifth decade of work. The years reflect the growth and development of the Court from precarious beginnings in the mid-fifties to the battles with censorship in the sixties, the troughs of the early seventies, the wars of attrition of the eighties and the movement of the Company into the West End in the nineties. In 1964 George Devine could not afford to perform other than cosmetic surgery on his beloved theatre. Thirty years later, Stephen Daldry, armed with a huge subvention from the National Lottery, determined that the theatre in London's Sloane Square should remain essentially Devine's theatre. In the meantime, however, the Court had become central to theatrical life in Britain and many other countries. For many, it had become an institution. Analysing this institution is the purpose of this account, for to define the Court is in many ways to define the modern stage. No other company has had a comparable effect on post-war theatre writing and production. Without the Royal Court, the emergence of what became the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, together with the growth of a myriad smaller theatres, might not have been possible.

The struggle to demonstrate Devine's belief that theatre could equal the seriousness of other artistic forms engendered a tightly knit, fiercely defensive group. The Court family was exclusive and uncompromising. It still is.