Shakespeare Performances in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, 1986–7

Summary

In a year of exceptional financial crisis for the Royal Shakespeare Company, relieved at last (though only temporarily) by the promise of massive sponsorship from the Royal Insurance Company, a year during which the government made clear that funding for the arts would depend increasingly upon the private sector – including people who pay for tickets – theatregoers were offered a good selection of Shakespeare’s more popular histories, comedies, and tragedies, the only comparative rarity – Titus Andronicus – playing in a smaller auditorium, the Swan. And in spite of financial stringencies, the year saw performances, given in the provinces, at the Old Vic, and overseas, by a newly formed group, the English Shakespeare Company, in which the considerable but diverse talents of Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington unite in the effort ‘to produce and to tour large-scale classical drama’.

The new company's first production presented Parts One and Two of Henry IV along with Henry V as a cycle, and I saw all three plays at the Old Vic during a single day. Such theatrical endurance tests, though popular, are of doubtful validity. Of course, this one provided an opportunity to enjoy within a short space of time an extraordinary diversity of dramatic writing linked by a narrative thread. It also brought audiences together in a curious sort of bonding with their fellow theatregoers and the performers, with both of whom they experienced an unnaturally close relationship for a concentrated period of time.