Alan Bates and Frances de la Tour in Antony and Cleopatra

Alan Bates and Frances de la Tour in Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 1999

Alan Bates and Frances de la Tour appeared in the RSC's production of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's poetic tragedy of lust and lost empires. At 65 and 54 respectively, Bates and de la Tour admitted they brought a more mature reading of the partnership to the production. One of their strengths lay towards the end of the play, in portraying the feeling of the world slipping through their fingers into the hands of Rome. The Times review found the reading very moving: 'De la Tour catches Cleopatra's volatile exhibitionism, displaying affection, caustic command and self-mockery in what sometimes seems like a single moment, but it is vulnerability that finally defines her', while Bates also gave the audience 'smouldering embers rather than fire. Even his jealous rages and furious disappointments have an elegiac feel. The charisma and magnanimity are still there, along with a sensitivity and reflectiveness missing in almost every Antony'.

Yolanda Sonnabend's design mixed its styles and influences: 'the Book of the Dead, the haute couture of John Galliano, leather bikers' jackets for the Romans'.

Stephen Dillane as Vanya

Stephen Dillane as Vanya in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Royal Shakespeare Company, Young Vic Theatre, London, England, 1998

Not much happens in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. By the end, all that has really happened is that Vanya and his niece, Sonya, have come face to face with the waste and desolation of their infinitely sad lives. All the 'Chekhovian' elements are there: the idle conversation, the absorbing portrait of the humdrum routine of daily life, the characters caught in a limbo of indecision.

Stephen Dillane played the role of Vanya in the 1998 RSC/Young Vic co-production, directed by Katie Mitchell. The Sunday Times thought the actors in this 'superlative' production 'not only understand the feelings of people in pain, their indignation, their bad temper, their flashes of black self-pity: they also understand the precise sources of pain', and so avoided a common trap with Chekhov of a 'generalised fog of melancholy'. The Financial Times praised 'The marvellous Stephen Dillane ... who is the best Uncle Vanya I have ever seen onstage ... an actor who can convey distress, depression, pain, even mounting hysteria, with often just a thread of voice, and without moving'.

Poster for All's Well That Ends Well

Poster for All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare, designed by by Ginni Moo-Young, ink on paper, 1982. Museum no. S.28-1983

This art nouveau inspired poster was produced purely for sale in the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatres in Stratford and at the Barbican Centre.

Trevor Nunn, the director of this production starring Peggy Ashcroft as the Countess of Roussillion, said that the poster needed to inform the public that the production was going to take place in the society of the 'Belle Epoque' and that since the play challenged the traditional social roles of men and women, the ritual and sexuality of the dance was an important visual image in the staging.

Ginni Moo-Young's design reflects John Gunter's arching white-pillared, glass-roofed set which became the Countess de Rossillion's conservatory where she took tea, a gymnasium and ballroom at court and the Florence railway station round which battle rages. Trevor Nunn added: 'RSC posters must be informative, decorative and evocative and as souvenirs they must capture the essence of the production they advertise, but have little or nothing to do with selling.'

Nigel Hawthorne as King Lear

Nigel Hawthorne as King Lear in King Lear by William Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, London, England, 1999

The RSC engaged in its first international collaboration, working with the highly respected Japanese theatre director Yukio Ninagawa on a production of King Lear. Ninagawa had previously directed Japanese versions of 'Macbeth' and 'The Tempest' in the UK, and was committed to staging all 37 of Shakespeare's dramas over 13 years at his base, the Saitama Arts Theatre, north of Tokyo. The first three, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Richard III, were played in Japanese to a Japanese audience.

King Lear was the first to be performed in English, first in Japan, and then at the Barbican in London. For this marriage of East and West, the quintessentially English Nigel Hawthorne took the part of the king, whose betrayal by his daughters drives him to madness. From day one, rehearsals were more akin to a traditional dress rehearsal: it was assumed that the actors knew their lines, and the purpose was to refine physical interaction and their understanding of the set - inspired by Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, with the Rising Sun as a backdrop.

Rupert Penry-Jones as Alcibiades

Rupert Penry-Jones as Alcibiades in Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, London, England, 2000

Timon of Athens is one of Shakespeare's most rarely performed plays. This production was the RSC's first since 1965. Michael Pennington took the central role of Timon, a generous Athenian who finds that, when he himself is in financial trouble, those who have benefited from his generosity in the past simply turn their backs. It is a tale of greed, fair-weather friends and disillusionment with humanity.

The Daily Mail thought Pennington 'simply magnificent: vocally supreme, acidly temperamental, and brimming with revealing, flawed self-centredness'.

Pictured is Rupert Penry-Jones in the smaller, yet crucial role of Alcibiades, the young general who repays Timon's kindness to him by leading an army against the Athenians who have banished them both. He too garnered excellent reviews, including this from the online review Curtain Up: 'the discovery of the year must be Rupert Penry-Jones who has youth and looks on his side as the play's true hero. I hope he will play Hamlet soon'.

Brixton Stories by Biyi Bandele

Brixton Stories by Biyi Bandele (born 1967), Tricyle Theatre, London, England, 2001

Biyi Bandele's play about a man who has started to drink after the death of his wife in childbirth is based on his book The Street.

Brixton Stories appeared as one of the RSC's 'Other Eden' series of plays. These were commissioned from contemporary writers as responses to Shakespeare's dramas. Through the genre of Magical Realism, Bandele created a world of dreams in Brixton where Ossie Jones, a lawyer, and his daughter Nehushta live. We see them on Ossie's last day alive. Reality becomes mixed with fantasy as Ossie, slipping into a coma, is wrongfully arrested and locked up in prison with a murderer. Suggesting, perhaps, Shakespeare's King Lear, the injustice Ossie faces in his dreamworld is too close to the real world for comfort.

Poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream

Poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, London, England, 1977. Museum no. S.468-1995

Poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, London, England, 1977. Museum no. S.468-1995