RSC announces further programming for summer 2023

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has released further details of its upcoming Summer 2023 programme which features four vivid and ambitious new play commissions, running in the Swan Theatre from July.

Two world stage premieres, a new co-commission with Watford Palace Theatre and HOME Manchester, and a timely revival of a 21st century classic are brought sharply into focus in 2023. These four plays offer fresh and, at times, radical new perspectives on well-known stories and the pervading political and cultural narratives that surround them.

Joining the previously announced Hamnet, the Swan Theatre re-opening season continues with a new production of The Empress by Tanika Gupta and directed by Pooja Ghai, running from 7 July – 15 September.

The production will visit the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre for four weeks from 4 – 28 October before returning to conclude its run in Stratford-upon-Avon from 1– 18 November.

Set in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the play tells the story of the sixteen year-old Rani Das, ayah (nursemaid) to an English family, who arrives at Tilbury docks after a long voyage from India, to start a new life in Britain. On the boat, Rani befriends a lascar (sailor), an Indian politician and a royal servant destined to serve the Queen. Full of hopes and dreams of what lies ahead, they each embark on an extraordinary journey.

Spanning a period of 13 years over the ‘Golden Era’ of Empire, this epic drama takes audiences from the rugged gangways of Tilbury docks to the grandeur of Queen Victoria’s Palace, whilst unveiling the long and embedded culture of British Asian history which continues to shape our society today.

The Empress will feature design by Rosa Maggiora, with lighting by Matt Haskins, music and sound by Ben and Max Ringham, and movement by Wayne Parsons.

Alongside The Empress and building on the tradition of premiering new work in the Swan Theatre, Brad Birch’s new play Falkland Sound is staged from 5 August – 16 September. The production will be directed by Aaron Parsons, with design by Aldo Vázquez and additional creative team to be announced.

This timely and evocative play tells the story of a community and way of life turned upside down following the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentine forces in April 1982.

About half the size of Wales, populated by fewer than two thousand people, with conditions so hostile that trees struggle to grow, everyday life on these strange and beguiling islands is changed forever as two powerful nations fight for the right to claim sovereignty in this lyrical and deeply personal story of empire, community, and what it means to live in someone else’s metaphor. 

Inspired by the real-life testimonies of those who lived through this seismic moment in history, Brad’s research for the play included a 10-day visit to the Falkland Islands in 2018, during which time he travelled across the country, interviewing the islanders and immersing himself in their unique way of life.

Tracy-Ann Oberman returns to the Royal Shakespeare Company from 21 September – 7 October in a new production of Shakespeare’s classic The Merchant of Venice, directed and adapted by Brigid Larmour from an idea by Tracy Ann-Oberman and co-created by them both.

Presented by Watford Palace Theatre in association with HOME Manchester and developed with support from the Royal Shakespeare Company, this gripping new production offers a rare and vivid insight into a dark chapter in our history, all too relevant to Britain today.

Fascism is sweeping across Europe, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists threatens a paramilitary march through the Jewish East End. Shylock (Tracy Ann-Oberman), a widowed survivor of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia, hopes to give her daughter Jessica a better life. She runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street where Mosley will march. Charismatic heroine Portia and the Merchant himself, Antonio, are aristocratic Mosleyites, their playground is piano bars at the Ritz, bias cut silk gowns, white tie and tails. As these worlds collide, a struggle for morals, power and prejudice ensues with devastating consequences.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 is directed by Brigid Larmour, with costumes and set design by Liz Cooke, lighting by Rory Beaton, sound by Sarah Weltman, composition by Erran Baron Cohen, movement by Richard Katz, and video design by Greta Zabulyte.

The production opens at Watford Palace Theatre on 27 February, before transferring to HOME in Manchester where it runs from 15 March. The production will tour to venues across the UK throughout the Autumn of 2023.

Completing the season is Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois running from 14 October – 18 November in the Swan Theatre.

Co-directed by Charlie Josephine and Sean Holmes with design by Grace Smart, this rollicking queer cowboy show follows hot on the hoofs of the critically-acclaimed I, Joan, which premiered at Shakespeare’s Globe in April 2022.

Part gun-slinging Western, part love-story for our times, this playful and exuberant celebration of queer love, freedom and self-expression tells the story of handsome bandit Jack Cannon, whose unprompted arrival in the sleepy frontier town inspires a gender revolution and starts a fire under the petticoat of every one of the town’s repressed inhabitants.

Acting Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Erica Whyman said: “This season is a celebration of the power of theatre and of stories we should have heard or should have listened to, but we haven’t dared.

“We live in a volatile, fractious world. Shakespeare would have recognised its energy; he too knew a world of accelerating change, inventive and exhilarating, but also furious, divisive, unequal, uneasy. The RSC has always believed it essential to support and celebrate the living writers that have their fingers on this unease, who can expose new ways of seeing our history and conjure a brave new world that we don’t yet understand. Now more than ever it takes courage to speak these truths, as new cultural wars roar and mutter.  

“All four Swan productions are surprising, illuminating, strong of mind and big of heart. Falkland Sound by Brad Birch explores with compassion the human experience of the Islanders during the conflict, and the ferocious politics which informed the British response. The Empress by Tanika Gupta – now on the GCSE syllabus - presents an extraordinary friendship and a beautiful love story, whilst forensically exposing the blithe injustice of empire. Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice 1936 is breathtakingly honest about the antisemitism described in the play and its new setting in 1930s Cable Street reveals a shameful slice of our history. And Cowbois by Charlie Josephine is a glorious unfolding of desire and hope – a Western like you’ve never seen it before - and an ingenious metaphor for the flowering of human potential that is possible when we can truly be ourselves.

“The Swan has a long and distinguished history of staging expansive, thoughtful new plays alongside plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It is an epic theatre in which you can create electric intimacy and a space in which to tell stories which really matter.”

All Stratford-upon-Avon productions go on sale to the public on 13 March, with priority booking available from 1 March. Tickets for The Empress at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre are on sale from today (21 February) here.