Tickets have just gone on sale for the Royal Shakespeare Company's Tyneside season. And at least one North-East theatre company is likely to be invited to Stratford next year to take part in the Shakespeare Festival. Viv Hardwick reports.

THE Royal Shakespeare Company is about to start Speaking Like Magpies for its Tyneside season this winter, thanks to a specially-commissioned play to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder plot.

Sadly, RSC associate director Dominic Cooke was forced to admit that the title of this new drama from Irishman Frank McGuinness is a mere coincidence and not a clever pun on Newcastle United supporters.

Even so, three Shakespeare comedies and four other Gunpowder Plot plays light the blue touchpaper for theatre-goers as tickets went on sale yesterday.

Newcastle's Theatre Royal will house a Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night and The Comedy Of Errors while The People's Theatre - standing in for Newcastle's rebuilding Playhouse for a second year - hosts the Gunpowder Plot plays.

Other explosions of interest come from director talks before productions, two Family Days (November 19 and 26), increased interaction with schools and high hopes of a "long-term" event taking Newcastle's Live Theatre work to Stratford.

But with the RSC about to start the mammoth job of replacing its main theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon for 2010, it's the 2006 news that the company is planning to stage all 37 of the Bard's main works that is capturing the imagination.

Director of press and public affairs, Roger Mortlock explains: "This time next year we'll be talking about what bits of the complete works we want to share with you in Newcastle. It's the biggest festival we've ever done in the history of the RSC so it's a big deal for us. We'll be looking to launch the whole season on July 11 and we'll produce 11 to 15 ourselves and the really exciting thing for us is that the rest of the 37 plays will be from other companies who will come to Stratford for that year."

"How you keep a festival going year-round from April 2006 until Shakespeare's birthday the next year we'll be exploring as we go."

Mr Mortlock confirmed that the RSC is in negotiation with a North-East company about bringing it to Stratford to stage one of the 37 plays.

"It might be more than one in the end but we don't want to be drawn just yet," he says.

Mr Cooke paid tribute to Theatre Royal chief executive Peter Sarah, who died in April aged 58, and called him a remarkable man.

"He was fantastic to work with and we want to dedicate this season to his memory to mark our sense of loss," he says.

Concerning the 2005 season he adds: "After depressing you with a collection of tragedies last year we're hoping to brighten your lives up a little bit more with three comedies. The idea is that when Michael Boyd started as artistic director was to create seasons of work that had a guiding idea around which a group of actors could be bonded together and focus on how to create a particular type of work in a particular space."

Greg Doran-directed A Midsummer Night's Dream is already causing a stir because of his current fascination with puppetry which has seen some of the fairy characters become puppets. Doran has also unearthed another series of "forgotten" dramas for the Gunpowder season - dubbed the 9-11 of its day - at The People's Theatre. This includes Shakespeare's 'banned play' Thomas More, with the chilling subject matter of London asylum seekers; A New Way To Please You (or The Old Law) by Thomas Middleton, William Rowley and Philip Massinger which focuses on euthanasia; Believe What You Will by Philip Massinger about a Middle Eastern leader on the run from a superpower and Sejanus - His Fall by Ben Jonson which was published in 1605 and saw the author face charges of treason.

Speaking Like Magpies, set to debut at Stratford on September 21, completes the People's Theatre season and writer McGuinness is promising a work to celebrate the unstable days of 1605 with black comedy, satire and daring political investigation.

Twelfth Night, directed by Michael Boyd, is back in rehearsal following the withdrawal of Nicky Henson with ill-health from the role of Sir Toby Belch. Clive Wood, who gave the RSC tribute reading for Peter Sarah at his Newcastle Cathedral funeral service, has stepped in to replace Henson.

The Comedy Of Errors, directed by Nancy Meckler, will close the season at the Theatre Royal but does not to open at Stratford until July 15.

Dominic Cooke called Meckler "a real powerhouse and a really original theatre-maker who had a good time with the RSC at Newcastle last year (directing House Of Desires during the Spanish Gold season). The only clue I have is that she was talking about gangsters the last time I was passing."

Published: 02/06/2005