The entire run of the RSC’s new production of Hamlet sold out way ahead of last night’s official opening at Stratford-upon-Avon, and even though tickets are only on sale to RSC members at the moment for the all-too-brief West End run to follow at the Novello Theatre in December, tickets are already reportedly being advertised on e-Bay at £500 a pair. According to a story in today’s Independent, the RSC are “trying to fight the trade in black market tickets by emailing the guilty sellers and demanding they stop the auctions. In some cases, where the row and seat number were listed, they were able to pinpoint the exact member and threaten to cancel their tickets. ‘We’re doing everything in our power to try and curb this kind of activity, but it’s not something we can prevent,’ said a spokeswoman for the RSC.”
According to The Independent, the RSC also received a flood of membership applications following the announcement of David Tennant’s casting in the title role; and even if lots of stuff and nonsense was put about by the likes of Jonathan Miller and even one of my critical colleagues moaning about the supposed obsession of theatre producers with celebrity casting (but both proving themselves ignorant of Tennant’s own prior RSC pedigree), as I blogged about here at the time of that announcement, it does once again demonstrate the general public’s obsession with it that even leads them to join a membership scheme, and not always for healthy reasons like wanting to actually see the show but clearly rather to try to make a fast buck on e-Bay.
The same thing happened when the Donmar did Othello last year with Ewan McGregor.
But on that occasion the theatre capped out their membership scheme to ensure that the public still had a chance to get tickets when general booking opened. As Michael Grandage, keen to dispel the idea that the theatre was an exclusive club, told me in an interview for The Stage earlier this year, “Like every subsidised theatre, we do have a priority booking scheme, but we have a limit to ours. If every one of our priority bookers - most of them people who are simply conscientious theatregoers who paid £30 to join it - bought a seat, they could still only fill about 40% of the house. I think it gets dangerous if we aren’t letting the general public to have access to a majority of our seats. Those priority bookers took about 37% of the seats for Othello, leaving about 63% that went on sale to the general public. So most of the people watching Othello were not a theatre elite or rich.”
But while productions like Hamlet and Othello may, thanks to their star casting, draw new audiences (and new members) to the theatre, it has meant that the RSC has been busier than ever trying to monitor that audiences’ behaviour at every turn. According to another story, an email has also been sent to ticket bookers reminding them of the theatre’s photography policy. It states, “Given the profile of the actors who are involved in our production of Hamlet, we understand that there might be a temptation to record or photograph parts of the production. This can be incredibly distracting to actors and other audience members and can cause significant disruption to the performance. We ask that you do not take photographs whilst in the Courtyard Theatre … Should anyone breach these conditions they may be refused admission or asked to leave during the performance.”
And the RSC have also been forced to impose restrictions on what memorabilia will be autographed by members of the company outside the theatre, too; an RSC spokesperson has been reported saying: “Due to the huge amount of interest in the RSC’s current production of Hamlet, only Royal Shakespeare Company or production related memorabilia will be signed by members of the company. It is very flattering that there is so much interest in this production, but the sheer volume of requests means that we need to set some limits which will be as fair as possible for everyone.”
But even if this production has done that rare thing of crossing over to the news pages, what of the critics? In an interview in The Observer on Sunday, director Gregory Doran spoke of the pressures of doing the play, and said, “Doing these big plays you frankly ought to be under pressure. The sheer act of getting through five acts of Shakespeare requires such muscularity. Another celebrity wouldn’t get through it but David’s doing an incredible job. But no matter how much the audience enjoy it, it will be defined by what the critics say. It’s a hall of mirrors.”
Some of those verdicts are out today, even though last night’s curtain only came down at 10.40pm. But no, there wasn’t the usual unseemly scramble of critics rushing out to meet their deadlines; the RSC had discreetly allowed the overnight national critics into the final preview on Monday, so several critics were missing last night (though The Guardian’s Michael Billington kept to the official opening last night). More surprisingly, also missing was RSC artistic director Michael Boyd; though he typically keeps a low profile on press nights, even of his own shows, I’m told he was actually on holiday. That’s his right, of course, but since the schedule for this production and its official opening was planned months ago, you’d have thought that he could have scheduled his personal holiday arrangements differently. Doran, is after all, the RSC’s Chief Associate Director, and the RSC - as Boyd’s own work typifies - is above all an ensemble, a family of artists who work together regularly and should support each other’s work.
Give Michael Boyd a break will you? I'm sure the Hamlet schedule was set according to Mr. Tennant and Mr Stewart's schedule. We don't know what sort of family holiday plans and/or obligations Mr Boyd has - nor is it any of our business, however given that the RSC's schedule is so ambitious and all consuming I'll bet he doesn't spend nearly as much time with his family as he (or his family) would like and so even though Hamlet is a major opening, the production itself is not his and how do you explain to your family that there can't be uninterupted holiday time this year ? I'm sure he'll be in attendance when the show transfers into the West End.
Cheap shot at Boyd- I'm sure he's seen the production already, and I'm sure he'll see it again. I expect he's given notes to Doran. Why should he be at press night? To you (a critic) it might be the most important, or perhaps the only significant performance a production has, but the actors have already been performing for a fortnight, and the vast majority of the audience will see it after last night.