Another time, another place
It may look like a rusty old shipping container, but it’s actually the Courtyard Theatre, the temporary home of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford and the building that the company occupies while the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre across the road is being rebuilt. When I first saw it, I didn’t think it was going to be my sort of building. Although I rather like rusty old corrugated iron barns, this ugly duckling seemed at first sight a bit too industrial for Stratford’s swan-haunted riverside, too harsh for its cottage neighbours.
But the Courtyard Theatre has grown on me. It’s not just like I admire the warm tones of its rusty ridges as they glow in the sun; not only that I appreciate the rightness of a temporary metal building on the site of the RSC’s former ‘experimental’ space, The Other Place. I’ve also discovered the qualities of the interior, a compact and friendly theatrical arena that seems to inspire those who perform in it. A few weeks ago at the Courtyard I enjoyed hugely the combined RSC/Baxter Theatre Centre production of The Tempest. The other night I was entertained by As You Like It.
The entire audience is close to the stage, and the design of the interior gives plenty of opportunities for the actors to enter and exit between the seats, bringing players and spectators still closer together. And the whole space is warm and, for such a modern, box-like building, curiously responsive, housing equally happily As You Like It’s doom-laden, almost oppressive early scenes, and its cheerful, life-enhancing conclusion.
In the interval of The Tempest, various members of the audience were speculating about what would happen to this temporary building when the main theatre comes back into use towards the end of next year. I got the impression that most of them – including some local people who had to live with its industrial-looking exterior – rather hoped it would stay.
