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The man who remade the RSC
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 04.12.07
Pulling power: Michael Boyd is overseeing the return of David Tennant in Hamlet
Return of the king: Sir Ian McKellen plays Lear, in the RSC production now at the New London Theatre
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Both the reviews and the box-office receipts must have made sweet reading for Michael Boyd in the past week. Nearly five years after he took over a Royal Shakespeare Company to which the adjective " troubled" seemed permanently attached, he has presided over a new London season that is set for financial success as well as critical acclaim.
A company that was in the artistic doldrums with a £2.8 million deficit when Boyd succeeded Adrian Noble as artistic director can now boast the headlinegrabbing sell-out production of Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear and a near sellout run of Chekhov's The Seagull at the New London Theatre. There are strong sales at the Soho Theatre, too, for a new work by Anthony Neilson that didn't even have a title until a month or two ago and, in coming months, the complete Shakespeare Histories will be seen at the Roundhouse, while other work will arrive at the Tricycle.
It is the biggest programme that the RSC has brought to London since Boyd took the job in March 2003 and follows the equally triumphant year-long Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival that ended in Stratford in the spring.
Slightly crumpled and looking every inch a man who has battled his way out of the mire, Boyd has every right to be content. "There was a bit of gardening to do," he admits over tea in the RSC's cramped London offices near the Donmar. "But we're now beginning to show signs of walking the walk."
He has just signed a new contract - and although he's vague on the details ("I pathologically avoid contracts"), he is absolutely clear on the facts and figures of the company's achievements under his command.
Last season, productions of Much Ado About Nothing with Tamsin Greig and Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest, both with Patrick Stewart, all at the Novello, took £2.7 million at the box office, a 134 per cent increase on the company's previous year in London. More than £1.1 million of tickets were sold on the first day, which was the highest advance Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the Novello's owner, had ever taken at any of his theatres for drama.
While Boyd's predecessor Noble ditched the RSC's base in the Barbican, then suggested RSC audiences couldn't find their way to Camden for the Roundhouse, Boyd just smiles. "People seem to be finding us."
He thinks the Complete Works Festival had a "significant impact", helping rejuvenate interest in Shakespeare so that it is now feasible to have a hit Macbeth in the West End and for Sam Mendes to persuade the BBC to do a new set of Shakespeare films.
The excitement is gratifying - though this was not what mattered most to Boyd. "Selfishly, the thing I was most interested in was the impact on the company itself. We will never be the same again." The packed schedule meant "everyone was hanging on tightly with white knuckles. We forged relationships that can't be broken".
Noble came to believe that having a company of actors who worked together on a range of shows over a couple of years was impossible because actors wanted the freedom to take more lucrative film and TV work. But Boyd was adamant he required a company - and now has few problems attracting the actors he wants. "The casting department say there's a different kind of ratio to those calls in and those calls out [from before]," he says.
His hope that what he called "the RSC diaspora" would return is being fulfilled with the likes of McKellen, Stewart, David Warner and Judi Dench, some of whom had been away for decades. "It's great that very important theatre actors from the RSC's past have wanted to come back."
He is looking for another part for McKellen for the future, while Patrick Stewart - who last week won the Evening Standard Best Actor Award for Macbeth - has already committed to another run. He will play Claudius alongside the Hamlet of another eagerly anticipated returnee, David Tennant. Though now famous for Doctor Who, Tennant was a regular performer with the company in the Nineties and is also to play Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost next year. "Astonishingly we were thinking about a couple of plays in the repertoire and it coincided with David telling a friend of his that what he would really like to do was go to the RSC to play those two parts. It was a pretty straightforward piece of casting."
Tennant's commitment adds proof to Boyd's claim that performers from TV and film are now flocking to the theatre. "I think we're turning a wee corner where it might even become fashionable in terms of actors' career choices."
Yet Boyd suggests it's not just the people who want to appear who are making theatre sexy, but the venues themselves. He heaps praise on The Arcola in east London, the Menier Chocolate Factory and the Donmar, not forgetting the work of Nicholas Hytner at the National. "It all seems to me very healthy."
Those who complain about the overabundance of musicals in the West End get short shrift. "Musical theatre is theatre. There's good musical theatre and bad musical theatre. It really doesn't strike me as a crisis."
It is hard to imagine now the degree of determination and guts Boyd must have deployed to have wooed audiences back to the RSC. A Belfast-born, Scottish-educated father of three who lives in north London when not in Stratford, he arrived brimming with ideals - of the importance of verse-speaking and of the company, but also of opening up to international influences - and has turned what often sounded woolly into something concrete.
The long-awaited redevelopment at Stratford-upon-Avon is under way. So thoughts are beginning to turn to what the RSC is to do about a permanent base in London. "It's still too early to start laying the foundation stones for our new London home but it's certainly time to start laying foundations for those foundations.
The 2012 Olympics are helping focus thoughts. "There's an understanding between us and the Olympics cultural committee that we would be very interested in playing our part." A festival of Shakespeare was part of the promised cultural offering in the successful bid document. "And we've got lots of experience with large-scale Shakespeare festivals. But there's lots of to-ing and fro-ing in terms of finding funding."
He offers only cryptic clues as to where the RSC might come to roost in London. "We almost certainly won't crack it with one space," he admits. In Stratford, once work is complete, they will have the reconfigured Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Swan, which remains the same, and The Other Place reinstated. It will be impossible to have three spaces in the same London building, but he is thinking creatively. "There are lots of gorgeous buildings here, including non-theatres which, with a less expensive intervention, could be just the ticket."
And that's all he can reveal for now. Whatever, wherever. On current form, the audiences will come.
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Reader views (4)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
Not all together in agreement about the 'drafting in' of Warner. I rather loved his interpretation - which is just not the predictable ho, ho, ho Santa Claus thing that some people expect. Sometimes it's just good to add a bit of salt to the mix.
True - all the Histories are a bit of a curate's egg - but a remarkable feit of endurance - from an amazingly hard working company.
- L. Bassett, U.K.
My wife and I agree with the comments of Rmb Boston on the later Henrys. The production of HenryIVs were very disappointing. The male actors were not up to the RSC standard and we would even suggest that some were miscast. The female parts were well acted. We are now reluctant to see Henry V. The memory of Alan Howard as Henry V and the War of the Roses plays we remember with great affection.
- Alex Lawrence, Marlow UK SL7 1BW
Why, oh why did the RSC ever leave the Barbican. I know it was Noble who took the decision, but now that he has gone why cannot Michael Boyd return to a comfortable, accessible venue? I understand that the Barbican would welcome them back. There are two theatres, I understand not too ideal for the actors, but this can be remedied. We live out of town. We can get to the Barbican by car in one hour and ten minutes, park our car, have a meal, relax , see the performance, relax and then go to our car, parked in safety, all under one roof and drive home!
Michael, do please do go back to the Barbican. We and hundreds, nay, thousands of theatre lovers would be so grateful. We are no longer young and feel vulnarable in the West End, nowhere to park safely, expensive restaurants...we have to walk, dodge crowds and try and find our way home. We have tried it. No, we and many others will NOT go to the West End or Chalk Farm to see even the most attractive performance!
- Alex Lawrence, Marlow, UK
I agree with Louise Jury that Michael Boyd deserves great credit for turning round the RSC and creating a real buzz in the company. I would just make one observation: The later plays in the History cycle were lacking in inspiration and I began to wonder whether performing the plays this way, with just one company of actors, was partially to blame. In fact it was not done precisely with one company of actors since David Warner had to be drafted in to play Falstaff, and not especially well. Sorry to spoil the story, but let's have the truth.
- Rmb, Boston, USA
