If Gregory Doran – Greg to his friends – were a character from Shakespeare, he would be best cast as Kent from King Lear because he has the steadiness, kindness and faithfulness of a self-appointed servant. But instead of being loyal to a madman in a storm, it is to Shakespeare that Doran has devoted 35 years, in Stratford-upon-Avon and, for the past decade, as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director. When he took over from Michael Boyd in 2012, he announced it was the “S” in RSC he would be emphasising, and he has excelled at precisely that. His radical undertaking has been to present the entire canon, including Shakespeare’s more also-ran dramas (his first full Shakespeare production, during Adrian Noble’s reign, was Henry VIII). And now, as we inch towards the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, Doran’s revels are about to end: he steps down as artistic director emeritus having directed over his career – astonishingly – 50 productions for the RSC, with several starring his husband, Antony Sher, who died in December 2021. He has also just published a tremendous homage to Shakespeare that lightly doubles as the story of his own life: My Shakespeare: A Director’s Journey Through the First Folio. His final production for the RSC will be Cymbeline, the last play in Shakespeare’s First Folio, a work of magical – if overplotted – beauty. A perfect swan song.
It is almost lunchtime, with April showers outside the RSC’s south London rehearsal rooms. Doran greets me at the door – he is letting me in on a run-through. I recognise him at once (we’ve met before, long ago). He looks like a benign bear, if rather too stylish in his maroon sneakers and chic frameless specs, to be altogether ursine. His mane of iron-grey hair, held back by a thin leather hairband, has been cut over 35 years by Sandra Smith, he later reveals, who heads up the RSC’s wig department. There is an immediate warmth, mixed with bashfulness, about Doran. He exudes security and inspires confidence. Adjoa Andoh (who starred as Portia in his Julius Caesar) remembers his rehearsal room as “a safe space in which you feel encouraged to innovate and be fearless”. He introduces me to his cast. We’re in what looks like a crowded war room, tables strewn with papers – only it is magic, not war, that is the strategy here.
