When the boss of a big theatre company stands down it is usually the cue for change or continuity. In the case of Greg Doran – who has resigned as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company but will keep his links with it as a director emeritus and a verse specialist – I hope it will be both. The RSC urgently needs a reboot. And some things are worth preserving.
Doran’s greatest achievement during his 10-year tenure has been overlooked: he revamped the idea of the Shakespeare repertory. His grand scheme was to present each of Shakespeare’s plays within eight years (it stretched to 10 because of Covid). Pre-Doran, a Stratford season would be built around the bankable hits with a few oddities such as King John or Timon of Athens thrown in. That meant that popular plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Twelfth Night would come round every two or three years, thus forcing directors to find ever more extravagant variations on over-familiar texts. Doran democratised the rep by ensuring that each play had only one production within the cycle so that Much Ado had no more exposure than Measure for Measure.
