A unique experience coming up
In mid-March the RSC will perform all eight plays of Shakespeare’s two tetralogies in chronological order in less than 72 hours, and all this with the same cast. I’m going to write about the experience of seeing this full cycle being performed, and you’ll be able to read about it in this blog. It’s going to be an exhausting few days for everyone, audience and cast alike, and should finally answer the question if you can ever have too much Shakespeare; my opinion has always been that you can’t, but I suppose I might possibly change my mind after this massive dose.
Time will be short on the days when they’re doing three plays on the same day, there’s 80 minutes between “Henry IV part 1” and “Henry IV part 2”, and then only 70 minutes between “Henry IV part 2” and “Henry V”, if the listed time for each production is correct, and it looks very similar for the three parts of “Henry VI”. I hope to be able to post on each play before the next one starts, but those 70 minutes look very, very tight indeed, as I also need to fit dinner into that equation, plus the minutes it’ll take me to get to where I’m staying and then back again, so we’ll see if it works out, otherwise some posts will be slightly delayed. I suppose it’s too much to hope for that there might actually be a wireless network near the theatre that I could log onto, as that would save quite a bit of time, but who knows.
When I told a friend, who has already been to several of the “trilogy days” (where they do three of the Histories on the same day), about the idea of posting in between plays, her initial response was “You must be mad”. Well, yes, I suppose so, but I’ll try to fit it in all the same.
In order to save some time when writing this stuff I’ll use the standard abbreviations of the play titles, instead of the full titles with citation marks and everything. In other words, “Henry IV part 1” becomes 1H4, “Henry VI part 3” becomes 3H6 and so on, and the names of the various kings will obviously be similarly abbreviated.
The cycle starts on Thursday March 13th and finishes on the 16th (Sunday), which is the end of the Stratford run for the Histories, after which they’ll transfer to London for a brief season at the Roundhouse in April and May, where they’ll end the run with the same cycle of all eight plays done in chronological order. “Insanely ambitious” is a term that I’ve heard used at times when people have discussed this latest RSC project, and a project of this scale certainly isn’t likely to happen again any time soon. I hope to be able to provide a detailed account of what the experience is like for those of you who won’t be seeing this cycle, as it will be a really unique experience.
The next entry for this blog will be just before the chronological Histories cycle starts, probably around March 12th, this post is just to whet your appetite for the whole thing. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I expect to do.
//Jenny
