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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.2023  Monday, 7 October 2002

From:           Takashi Kozuka <resuscitation@yahoo.co.uk>
Date:           Sunday, 6 Oct 2002 12:29:32 +0100 (BST)
Subject:        "Barbican to stage the Bard - without RSC"

 [From The Guardian (3 October 2002)]

"Barbican to stage the Bard - without RSC"
London centre plans to set up its own producing company
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent

As Shylock said in The Merchant of Venice: "If you prick us do we not
bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Just when the Royal Shakespeare Company thought things could get no
worse, the Barbican Centre is about to extract its pound of flesh from
the company in the most chilling manner possible.

Having in the past year lost an artistic director, audiences, and, some
say, its way, the troubled company was hit with the sucker blow last
night.

The Barbican, the long-time London home that the company quit in March
for the glamour of the West End, is to stage rival Shakespeare
productions with the £1m it has saved from no longer having to subsidise
the RSC.

While observers felt that the poor unloved Barbican would come off worse
from the split, having designed its theatre and studio specifically to
meet the RSC's requirements, it has emerged renewed from the divorce.

Its artistic director, Graham Sheffield, has let it be known that the
RSC is to get some competition in the guise of the Barbican's own
producing company.

Crowds are flocking to Robert Wilson's new production of Woyzeck and the
Barbican's innovative BITE seasons of theatre, while the English
National Opera is shortly to take up temporary residence there while its
home at the London Coliseum is being overhauled. This week it was also
revealed that at last £12.2m is to be spent to sort out the Barbican's
maze of a foyer, and make its bars and restaurants more welcoming.

A sizeable chunk of the new Barbican company's repertoire will be
Shakespeare and other classics in which RSC traditionally specialises.

"We will create our own productions with partners abroad and at home,
and that will include Shakespeare eventually," Mr Sheffield told today's
Stage newspaper. "We want the Barbican to continue to have an element of
Shakespeare in the programme - with or without the RSC."

However, he has kept the door ajar for the RSC to return if life in the
cut-throat world of commercial theatre proves too disagreeable. Indeed,
the RSC is returning to the complex next year to premiere its stage
adaptation of Midnight's Children, the magical story set in Bombay that
made Salman Rushdie's name.

Last night the RSC was keen to smooth over the cracks.  "We are not
afraid of the competition. You can't have too much Shakespeare. We wish
them all the best, and we shall be returning to the Barbican every so
often."

No one at the complex would last night be drawn on whether The Merchant
of Venice might be most appropriate play to kick off the season of
Shakespeare in The City in two years' time.

Mr Sheffield, who was unveiling plans to make the Barbican the kind of
venue in which audiences could hang out long into the night, said the
new company would not have a resident director, writers, or production
crew. "We want to co-produce by putting together an international
consortium. Productions will play in two or three venues - here, Paris,
New York, or wherever."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,803360,00.html

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Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
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