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| Theatre seating at the Barbican |
Theatre
By Jane Edwardes
In 1982 the RSC moved into the new brutalist Barbican Centre, and a bunch of critics were late for the first performance because they couldn’t get out of the car park. Irving Wardle, then the critic for the Times, crippled himself trying to kick a metal door down. The RSC never got used to the place. ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’, ‘Richard III’ and ‘The Seagull’ were all major productions, but gradually the theatre began to feel restrictive as companies found unconventional new spaces in which to stage Shakespeare. The relationship between the RSC and the Barbican, including the managing director, Detta O’Cathain, grew increasingly fraught until artistic director Adrian Noble announced in 2001 that he was withdrawing the RSC altogether.
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The Barbican quickly recovered – it’s the RSC that has found life in the outside world more challenging than it expected. It expanded Bite, the adventurous seasons of international theatre that have featured world-famous names like Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Laurie Anderson, Lev Dodin and Robert Lepage. These are expensive companies and, truth to say, their often painterly images have proved more suited to the space than Shakespeare’s more intimate, rougher work. The building will never be warm and welcoming, but at least the company now feels at one with itself, rather than trying to control a rebellious tenant.
Triumph ‘The Far Side of the Moon’ by Robert Lepage (2003).
Disaster ‘The Merchant of Venice’ directed by Peter Sellars (1994).
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1 comment
I read this article with interest and noted that Mr Glancey did not do his research - Chamberlin, Powell and Bon had a fourth partner; my father, Charles B Greenberg. He, too, was heavily involved in the Barbican. It took over his life from 1960 until he retired from active architecture practice. If Mr Glancey lived in one of the houses on the Barbican site he was in something my father designed. My father's involvement in the firm as a partner is often overlooked because he chose not to have his name added to the name of the firm - he maintained that Chamberlin, Powell, Bon and Greenberg did not have quite the same ring to it that the original name of the firm did. This results in what Mr Glancey did - my father's invisibility.
To say that the firm produced nothing much except Barbican is also incorrect. Towards the end of Barbican's building my father opened a branch of the firm in Honiton, Devon. There they produced a few developments. If Mr Glancey ever wants to increase his knowledge of what my father did in relation to Barbican and other Chamberlin Powell and Bon developments in the South West please get in touch.
Regards,
Judith Farncombe nee Greenberg