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 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...
JULIUS CAESAR at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
★★★★☆ Where else could Boris reach for a historical parallel when politically carved up on the way to No.10? Here it is Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in a riveting, memorable production, based on 2,000 year ol...
SNOW IN MIDSUMMER at The Swan, Stratford on Avon
★★★☆☆ The time is now, the place is a remote Chinese factory town. A metallic café stage setting with two landings, flashes and throbs with digital lighting and percussive music. But the action played out ass...
THE SEVEN ACTS OF MERCY at The Swan, Stratford on Avon
Drawing on Caravaggio’s painting, The Seven Acts of Mercy, as inspiration, Lustgarten’s play attempts a commonality between the seventeenth century painter’s relationship with power (nobles and the Church) and his ...
THE TEMPEST at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
There is a certain irony in that at the same time as Shakespeare’s Globe in London has parted company with its new(ish) director Emma Rice for being too technical, too untraditional and too innovative, that other great...
THE ROVER at The Swan, Stratford on Avon
The Rover is set in Naples during Cromwell’s reign. Amongst banished cavaliers eking out an existence as mercenaries, and women evading society’s restraints in the freedom of carnival. And Ingram’s coup de théâtr...
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN at The Swan, Stratford Upon Avon
A full synopsis is essential to understanding, but the main story is of two young warriors, cousins, intimate friends and captives of war. Their mutual devotion evaporates, when both fall in love with a beautiful girl se...
KING LEAR at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford.
Sher’s Lear is an arrogant power-force in a stark, fearful world of pagan gods. A semi-deity, first seen on high enveloped in gold embossed furs, lifted on a spectacular glass sedan chair. His fall to insignificance ...