Adrian Lester and Alfred Enoch lead Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘global’ new season

Adrian Lester remodeling into Cyrano de Bergerac, Alfred Enoch taking over Henry V and a lauded reboot of The Forsyte Saga are a part of a brand new Royal Shakespeare Company season its co-artistic administrators say represents a daring “global” imaginative and prescient for the establishment.

Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey introduced the newest productions on Tuesday, pronouncing the brand new programme used to be a birthday party of worldwide impressed tales, “thrillingly told by the most exciting theatre artists of today”.

Lester will megastar in Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson’s new “quick-witted” model of Cyrano de Bergerac, and follows within the footsteps of Antony Sher, who performed the function in a celebrated Gregory Doran-directed manufacturing for the RSC in 1997.

Enoch, identified for his function within the Harry Potter motion pictures, will crew up with Harvey for her model of Henry V after the pair labored on a seriously acclaimed model of Pericles in 2024.

Pericles used to be Harvey’s first manufacturing for RSC since beginning as co-director and he or she will probably be hoping for a in a similar way well-received mission. The Guardian’s Mark Lawson praised final yr’s collaboration between Enoch and Harvey, who he stated couldn’t “disguise the play’s peculiarities but proves its beauties to be equally deep and its political intelligence acute”.

A two-part manufacturing of The Forsyte Saga, which is according to John Galsworthy’s books, involves the Swan theatre in November 2025 after a a hit run final yr on the Park theatre in London.

Josh Roche’s manufacturing has received plaudits already, with the Observer praising the minimalist means. Susannah Clapp stated “the family epic unfolds with intimate clarity on an almost bare stage”, including that – even supposing the 2 portions may well be observed one at a time – it used to be “satisfying to see them in one gulp”. There will probably be 14 alternatives to look the productions in a single sitting all through the run, which results on 10 January 2026.

The manufacturing isn’t with out its controversies: a rape scene horrified some audience when the books had been tailored for tv by way of the BBC in 1967 and ITV in 2002.

The outgoing creative director of the Bush theatre, Lynette Linton brings a brand new musical adaptation of William Kamkwamba’s award-winning memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, to the Swan theatre subsequent February.

Other productions come with Daniel Raggett directing Sam Heughan and Lia Williams, who will megastar in Macbeth; whilst Whitney White brings All Is But Fantasy, an formidable manufacturing billed as “four stories staged across two gig-theatre performances set against a live soundtrack of rock, pop, indie and gospel”.

Evans and Harvey stated: “From Malawi or Manhattan, through French fields, Scottish heaths, mythical lands and Giant country, our 2025/26 programme celebrates what we believe a 21st-century RSC can and should be: global in ambition and outlook, open and collaborative in nature and continuously redefining how Shakespeare and great storytelling can bring joy, connection and improve our understanding of one-another.

It was recently announced that Ncuti Gatwa, who recently concluded his role on Doctor Who, will star alongside Edward Bluemel in RSC’s Shakespeare vMarlowe drama, Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, which has its West End premiere at Wyndham’s theatre in August.

The joint artistic directors have previously secured 25,000 tickets at £25 in an attempt to “throw open the doors” to a extra various crowd, whilst James Ijames’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, Fat Ham, used to be a part of their spring 2025 season, considered one of 3 variations of Hamlet the RSC used to be staging.