Staging Restoration Comedy: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 1967-2019 [Hardcover]

Since its 1967 production of Vanbrughs The Relapse, the Royal Shakespeare Company has been the worlds leading producer of Restoration Comedies. This book is the first to document and critique the companys history of engagement with that repertoire. It reviews the spaces in which productions have been performed, design principles, casting, voicing, textual adaptation, musical direction, actor perspectives, and the problems of how to confront, adopt or depart from received notions of Restoration style. It goes on to posit that, for all the RSCs explorations of Restoration Comedy, the company has maintained the repertoire as a fringe interest played out in niche spaces, while recycling many of the assumptions it claims to challenge, and that what is needed is the writer-led intervention seen in RSC and National Theatre adaptations of French drama from the same period. Only then can Restoration Comedy begin to engage wider audiences in new sites of political, historical andcultural meaning.

Chapter One: Introduction.-Chapter Two: Twin Custodians? .-Chapter Three: Spaces and Practices .-Chapter Four: Performance History

.-Chapter Five: A Manifesto    

“Roberts’s book is a valuable contribution to the histories of the RSC and Restoration Comedy in performance. It prompts theatre historians to think more skeptically about the traditions and styles that continue to shape how theatre makers engage imaginatively with this repertory. Although the full history of Restoration Comedy on the modern stage remains to be written, this book lays the foundation for that future enterprise.” (Stephen Watkins, Theatre Survey, Vol. 66 (3), September, 2025)

 

David Roberts is Professor of English at Birmingham City University, UK. He has published numerous books anlÂ