At a press conference today to launch the Royal Court’s 50th anniversary celebrations that will take place next year, current artistic director Ian Rickson began by saying, “we usually let the work speak for itself”, but then spoke at length about his plans for his final season in charge (he has already announced his resignation from the post at the end of next year) which will partly look back, but mainly continue to look forward, as this “questioning theatre”, as he called it, continues to seek to do what it has done since the English Stage Company was founded in 1956: namely provoke and stimulate with new work.
He has assembled what, on paper at least, looks like a bumper season, with new plays promised by Tom Stoppard (Rock ‘n’ Roll, to be directed by Trevor Nunn in June in Stoppard’s first play in Sloane Square; in a postcard from the playwright that was read out earlier by Royal Court chairman Anthony Burton, he said, “I want to be part of the Royal Court’s history before I pack it in…. I don’t want to fall under a bus before having a play on its stage”), Terry Johnson (with a new play Piano/Forte, written specially for actresses Kelly Reilly and Alicia Witt), and David Hare, amongst others.
From the past, some 50 plays from the Royal Court’s last 50 years will be given rehearsed readings in a season in the Theatre Upstairs, kicking off with David Hare directing The Entertainer and former Royal Court artistic director Bill Gaskill returning to direct NF Simpson’s A Resounding Tinkle as a reading, as well as a full production of Sirens, an adaptation of the 11th chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses. Other returning Royal Court artistic directors for the season include Max Stafford-Clark, who will direct a new play by Stella Feehily (O Go My Man) and Anthony Page, directed a new play by debuting Royal Court playwright Simon Farquhar (Rainbow Kiss). And Harold Pinter is down to return to the Royal Court as an actor, to appear in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and Christopher Hampton will translate The Seagull for a new production to be directed by Rickson, who will also stage a revival of Cloud Nine by one of the Court’s most influential-ever playwrights, Caryl Churchill – a combination that he called both “Greedy but exciting”.
The big question, however, is who will take over? There’s been a big round of musical chairs amongst the artistic directorships of London’s major theatres in the last couple of years already that has seen the arrival of Nick Hytner at the National, Michael Boyd at the RSC, Michael Grandage at the Donmar Warehouse, Michael Attenborough at the Almeida and soon, Dominic Dromgoole at Shakespeare’s Globe; so who next? I have a subversive idea: Trevor Nunn, directing the Stoppard in Sloane Square, could be setting up his stall to take it over. Having run the RSC and National, it would be a fitting place for him to now prove his judgement, finally, in new writing for which he was repeatedly criticised during his tenure at the National.
trevor nunn??????
no, no, no!!!