Swan; Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
A new era at the RSC opens with a potent staging by Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi of his classic everyman tale and a clever take on Shakespeare’s comedy that cuts through the verbiage – with help from a Bridgerton stalwart
So this is the new RSC. Vibrant. Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey open their first season as joint artistic directors with a bold reimagining of one of the comedies and a carnival adaptation of a glorious 20th-century novel. They have filled the two stages with disguises and ideas about performing: with Shakespearean themes as well as with Shakespeare’s words.
Stratford now has more than one everyman: not only the prince of Denmark but The Buddha of Suburbia, or rather his son. The narrator of Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel is an ideal figure through whom to look inwards – at personality – as well as outwards, at an era and a society: vivid and in flux, he might have been created for the stage.
