Dr Who’s For Hamlet
Talk of recruits for Falstaff’s army reminds me that the worst kept secret in Stratford this week is the return of David Tennant — BBC TV’s latest Dr Who — to the RSC next year, when he will play Hamlet and Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Which RSC company will that be, then? It’s all terribly confusing at the moment, with Trevor Nunn’s RSC company revving up for the New London, Michael Boyd’s RSC company heading for the Roundhouse with the Histories, Tim Supple’s RSC Asian company touring the world and various other RSC companies doing…oh, I don’t know, the Margaret Attwood play that finishes this weekend in the Swan and the Roald Dahl show for kids in the Civic Hall in November.
I’m not quite sure where Gregory Doran’s RSC company stands in all this. Perhaps he’s handling the David Tennant wing of the RSC company. It all sounds very busy, but such galloping random activity is most unlikely to lead to a final definition of what we, or indeed the public, might choose to think of as the once glorious Royal Shakespeare Company.
