What's on in Warwickshire

Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford

Daily

Cost: Various

Hours: Various; plays in repertoire

There can be few places in Britain that roundly celebrate their most famous sons than does Stratford-upon-Avon. Birthplace of probably the world's most famous author, one William Shakespeare (aka "the Bard"), not only are there museums dedicated to his birthplace, his wife's house and his legacy, but the delightful Cotswold town is home to one of the world's great theatre companies: the Royal Shakespeare Company. With a year round programme in at least two theatres, whenever you go there is a chance to see top-flight acting.

However, change is afoot for the company. In April 2007 its main home, the 1932, Elisabeth Scott-designed Art Deco Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (latterly the Royal Shakespeare Theatre), closed for major refurbishment which will create, within the outside confines of Scott's building, a thrust stage, very much like Shakespeare may have recognised. Following on from the company's Complete Work's festival (April 2006 - June 2007), the main focus of the company's work has transferred to the Courtyard Theatre, which has been built as a temporary space (not that you'd realise it was temporary when you're inside it) on the opposite side of the road to the riverside Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Following Sir Ian McKellen's first King Lear (which brought the Complete Works festival to a close), artistic director Michael Boyd completes his history cycle, mounting the first four plays in the cycle - Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, and Henry V - before bringing the already opened final four in the cycle (Henry VI Parts 1, 2 & 3 and Richard III), to run three complete cycles in spring 2008.

Smaller-scale productions continue in the burnished glory that is the Swan Theatre, an atmospheric galleried playhouse fashioned in 1986 out of a former rehearsal space in the only extant part of the Victorian theatre. With its thrust stage emulating the design of Elizabethan theatres, it predated the opening of the Globe London's Bankside by a decade.

Founded in 1960 by Peter Hall, the Royal Shakespeare Company has built on an impressive history of performances in Shakespeare's birthplace since late Victorian times. The Royal Charter had been bestowed on the Memorial Theatre company in 1925 (a year before the original theatre was destroyed by fire), and when the new company was founded it was natural to be called the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).

Swan Theatre

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