{"id":632970,"date":"2026-10-01T08:18:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/632970\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T08:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:18:22","slug":"rsc-embraces-hugely-challenging-task-of-staging-susanna-clarkes-piranesi-and-virginia-woolfs-mrs-dalloway-royal-shakespeare-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/632970\/","title":{"rendered":"RSC embraces \u2018hugely challenging\u2019 task of staging Susanna Clarke\u2019s Piranesi and Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs Dalloway | Royal Shakespeare Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage two highly experimental novels, written almost 100 years apart and posing serious conundrums for adaptation, according to co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey. Virginia Woolf\u2019s 1925 \u201cday in the life\u201d classic Mrs Dalloway<\/a> and Susanna Clarke\u2019s otherworldly 2020 award-winner Piranesi<\/a> grapple with what they described as \u201ca century-old theatrical preoccupation: the exploration of inner life on stage\u201d.<\/p>\n

Harvey will direct Mrs Dalloway, adapted by Zoe Cooper, and said it would be \u201chugely challenging\u201d to \u201cbring the inside out\u201d from Woolf\u2019s novel, which uses stream of consciousness as the eponymous heroine gives a party whose guests\u2019 thoughts intermingle with her own. Cooper, said Harvey, has \u201ccreated this extraordinary sense that we as an audience are flowing in and out of people\u2019s minds, in and out of different moments in their histories\u201d. Mrs Dalloway opens in the Swan theatre in April and will be the third major adaptation of the novel staged in England within a year: Kit Green\u2019s one-woman performance<\/a> recently toured and Holly Robinson\u2019s new version opens at the Yard in London<\/a> in March.<\/p>\n

Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs Dalloway will have been adapted three times in a year. Photograph: incamerastock\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Piranesi, which finds a man trapped in a labyrinthine mansion with an ocean on one floor and the sky on another, won the Women\u2019s prize for fiction<\/a> in 2021. For the first 20 pages, said Evans, you have \u201cno idea what\u2019s going on\u201d. The adaptation by Sami Ibrahim will be directed in the Swan theatre by the ever-inventive Ned Bennett<\/a> who, when offered the opportunity by Evans, apparently said: \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do this \u2013 so yes!\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement of the two new productions \u2013 which Harvey said required \u201cbig lungs\u201d to be staged alongside the works of Shakespeare \u2013 comes amid a string of other literary adaptations by the RSC whose blockbuster hit Matilda<\/a> was based on Roald Dahl\u2019s bestseller. A two-part production of George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch opens on Thursday, its Christmas show is based on Alexandre Dumas\u2019s The Three Musketeers, and Games of Thrones: The Mad King \u2013 a prequel to the George RR Martin fantasy novels \u2013 had a sold-out season in Stratford this summer<\/a> and arrives in London next year.<\/p>\n

Evans said it \u201cjust so happens\u201d that two of the new productions announced on Thursday are based on books. The others \u2013 all staged in the Royal Shakespeare theatre \u2013 are Coriolanus starring Damien Molony and directed by Elizabeth Freestone; Richard II with Elizabeth Debicki<\/a> in the title role and directed by Daniel Raggett; and Romeo and Juliet, directed by Joanna Bowman \u201cas if the lovers are going to live\u201d according to Evans. There will be a tour for Robin Belfield\u2019s 80-minute version of The Comedy of Errors, presented in association with Cardiff\u2019s Sherman theatre and directed by Francesca Goodridge, also presented in the Other Place.<\/p>\n

The four Shakespeare productions will demonstrate the playwright\u2019s mastery across the genres, said Evans and Harvey. Born With Teeth<\/a>, a play about Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that was staged in the West End last year, will replace the RSC\u2019s planned Othello, postponed while its star Sharon D Clarke<\/a> undergoes treatment for cancer. Casting for Born With Teeth, which originally starred Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, has not yet been confirmed. Bluemel called Liz Duffy Adams\u2019s play \u201ca horny Elizabethan whirlwind\u201d.<\/p>\n

Harvey and Evans said that the RSC is working with a cohort of six writers on new scripts, the group mentored by Zoe Cooper alongside playwright Stewart Pringle whose new family drama Brock\u2019s Mill<\/a> will be presented at the Other Place in the spring.<\/p>\n

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The co-artistic directors, who took over in 2023, said they faced a \u201ccontinually challenging\u201d financial situation, even after a recent restructuring that included redundancies and a reduced cost base. Evans stressed that the company will be repaying its Covid recovery fund loan, through annual instalments of \u00a31.2m, until 2040.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage two highly experimental novels, written almost 100 years apart and posing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-632970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}