Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Waterside
Stratford-upon-Avon
Warwickshire
CV37 6BB
Ticket Hotline: 0844 800 1110 10am-6pm, Mon-Sat
As a company we give people the best possible experience of Shakespeare and live theatre. Everyone at the RSC, from actors to technicians, milliners to musicians, plays a part in creating the world you see on stage. Our work begins its life at our Stratford-upon-Avon workshops and theatres and we share it with audiences through our touring, residencies and online activity throughout the world.
Did you know that:
- As well as Shakespeare, we perform the work of his contemporaries, other classics and new work.
- 1 million visitors join us at our Stratford-upon-Avon theatres each year.
- We are a national company in the heart of the Midlands, performing throughout the UK and across the world.
- We have been making theatre in Shakespeare’s home town for over one hundred years, training generations of the very best theatre makers.
- We are the only theatre company with our own on-site armoury, producing breastplates, gauntlets, belts and weaponry .
- We have worked with 7200 amateur performers and ten partner theatres on our Open Stages project, championing amateur theatre nationwide.
- We reach 400,000 young people through our nationwide Learning and Performance Network, giving them a great first experience of Shakespeare.
- Matilda The Musical took seven years to develop and now performs to packed theatres in the West End and on Broadway.
- We are a registered charity (number 212481) and we generate 73% of our own income, alongside public investment from Arts Council England.
- Public funding for the arts makes up just 0.05% of Government spending and delivers an extraordinary return, supporting the performances you see on stages all over the country.
THE FANTASTIC FOLLIES OF MRS RICH at The Swan, Stratford on Avon
★★★★☆ In 1700 London money is one thing, social status another. Mrs Rich, widow of a merchant banker has a massive fortune and a gilt coach with dappled white horses. What she can't buy is the approval of th...
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI at the Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon
Webster’s revenger tragedy of 1623 outscores any cult movie for horror: with its enormous body count, cruel debasement of women, and mental torture that takes your breath away. It also rates highly for poetic imagery a...
A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
★★★☆☆ The party dancing overlorded by the youthful Scrooge’s paternalistic employer Mr Fezziwig (John Hodgkinson) is a joy of joys, full of skilful verve and innocent exuberance. Whilst Gerard Carey as the p...
TWELFTH NIGHT at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
★★★★☆ What do you get if you blend Shakespeare with panto, musicals, Arts and Crafts and Indian and Oscar Wilde influences? The answer from director Christopher Luscombe and designer Simon Higlett, is a deli...
CORIOLANUS at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
★★★☆☆ What expectation Shakespeare must have created in 1607, writing Coriolanus on the tail of King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra in the previous year! Sadly, set against that sublime benchmark the play...
DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE by the RSC at The Swan, Stratford upon Avon
★★★★☆ The plot in its essentials is of Aeneas the human son of the god Venus, a warrior refugee from the Greek destruction of Troy, intent upon forming a Trojan settlement in Italy: thus fulfilling his destin...
VENUS AND ADONIS at the Swan, Stratford
★★★★★ If you are trying to recall all thirty-eight of the plays, don’t. This minor miracle is not amongst them. It’s Gregory Doran’s adaption of Shakespeare’s beautiful, comic and tragic narrative po...
The RSC’s Titus Andronicus at Stratford
★★★★☆ Shakespeare’s early play, co-written with George Peele is the revenge play to end revenge plays, setting lasting standards only in horror. Yet Blanch McIntyre’s production, with a bravura title rol...
SALOMÉ at the Swan, Stratford on Avon
★★★☆☆ Oscar Wilde is associated with satirical comedy rather than tragedy, but Salomé from 1892 deals with the destructive power of supressed sexuality with passion and theatricality and, if not a classic, des...
VICE VERSA at the Swan, Stratford
★★★☆☆ Perhaps I'm a blackened sinner or just plain naïve, but a play billed as a risqué Roman sex comedy, came across to me as full of charming, childish fun . . . You leave the theatre smiling, and that's a...
THE HYPOCRITE at The Swan, Stratford
★★★☆☆ The title suggested a new take on Moliere by Hull born writer Richard Bean - who came to the fame with Made in Dagenham and One Man, Two Guvnors. There are similarities, but this is bawdy, full-throttle...
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA by the RSC at Stratford
★★★☆☆ As the name suggests: the relationship between the title characters is key to the play. When as in this production it fails to ignite, when history’s first great love celebrities seem like strangers, 2...