The Independent (London), December 29, 1999       THEATRE: EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR IN THE NEW YEAR; SHAKESPEARE - MAN OF THE MILLENNIUM - RIGHTLY LOOMS LARGE IN NEXT YEAR'S THEATRE CALENDAR. BUT WHAT NEW WORKS, IMAGINATIVE CASTING AND INSPIRED DIRECTION CAN WE 
AWAIT WITH EXPECTATION? 
Paul Taylor 
            
As Milton so very nearly wrote: "The world is all before us, where to choose/ The moment when we fuck up." Yes, 2000 is a daunting date for any scheduler's diary, and there's nothing like either tackling it head on or insouciantly ignoring it. To commemorate the first two years of the new century, the Royal Shakespeare Company is, for example, unrolling the mighty eight-play sequence of Shakespeare's history plays. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Questions tinged with a new urgency, given the portentous timing and the not-so-small matter of Europe - who are we? How did we get here? What does it mean to be English? - can be handily approached through renegotiating the complexities of these two great cycles. 
Fine, but isn't it a mite obvious as a millennial commitment? No, look closer. Whenever the RSC has tackled the histories en masse in the past (from the landmark Hall/Barton Wars of the Roses in 1963 to the Adrian Noble Plantagenets of 1988), the project has been shaped by a single directorial vision. Here, though, there's an intriguing difference. Beginning with Steven Pimlott's staging of Richard II at the Other Place in March, the first four plays will be unveiled in the contrasting styles of three different directors (Pimlott, Michael Attenborough and Edward Hall, whose all -male Twelfth Night at the Watermill, Newbury was one of the revelatory delights of 1999) and across a range of environments in Stratford's three theatres. 
There's an attractive riskiness about this and an aptness, too - the change of vision and venue reflecting the unpredictability of the change of monarch. Some of the money comes, ironically enough, from our former colonies across the Atlantic colony - all too, too madly Madness of George III. Let's hope the sponsors won't start dictating their own stuffy terms. 
            
Shakespeare, man of the millennium, is the ultimate progenitor of 
another of the year's most mouthwatering prospects. Ralph Fiennes renews his creative connection with Jonathan Kent, co-director at north London's Almeida (a partnership that began with the Hackney Empire/Broadway Hamlet and then the Islington/Moscow Ivanov) in a repertory double of Richard II and Coriolanus. This combination of plays is a brilliant pairing not just thematically (the 14th-century king and the Roman warrior both spoilt and damaged hyper- individualists who are liabilities to - and critiques of - the body politic), but also in terms of casting possibilities. 
At the centre of both tragedies is an intense relationship between two men, a criss-cross of oppressive affinities and rivalries. Playing Bolingbroke and Tullus Aufidius to Fiennes's Richard and Coriolanus is the superb Linus Roache, an actor of such thrilling gifts that he can live down anything - even having the hapless, Neil
Hamilton-hugging Tory stooge Ken (Coronation Street) Barlow as his dad. 
            
A further reason for one's frankly dribbling anticipation is the 
"found" venue. Having sallied forth from its Islington base into the West End and to the Malvern Festival, the Almeida is now striking out into uncharted territory, producing these Shakespeares in the atmospheric ruined shell of the old Gainsborough Film Studios in
Shoreditch, London. 
The Almeida, which increasingly resembles a National Theatre in exile, is also responsible for some of the most intriguing new plays of 2000. 
http://www.almeida.co.uk

(Thanks to Antonieta, who posted this article to me! Mari)