The RSC has come back home

The Aldwych Theatre is particularly famous for two quite distinct phases in its history. From the Twenties to the mid-Fifties, it played host to a series of fantastically British farces, the "Aldwych Farces" as they were sensibly named (one can only weep at having missed Peter Sellers in Watch It Sailor!, for example); and from 1960 to 1981, it was home to the Royal Shakespeare Company's London operation.

When the Barbican Centre was built, the RSC decamped, of course. But London theatre, like fashion and politics, tends to move in clear cycles, according to financial pressure, audience taste and practitioners' whim - and when the RSC's artistic director. Adrian Noble, decided to "reinvent" the company several years ago, he down-sized the commitment to Fortress Barbican too. Which means - and I promise there's some logic to this - the RSC is back at the Aldwych, with a sentimental but sweet musical version of Frances Hodgeson Burnett's children's book The Secret Garden.

Hype-merchants have described The Secret Garden as the RSC's new Les Misérables (which still rakes in about £500,000 a year). It isn't, but then Cameron Mackintosh himself has recently declared massive hits like Les Mis unrepeatable, or at least increasingly difficult to pull off. The Secret Garden, by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon (Carly's sister), was first performed nine years ago on Broadway, and despite its definitively English subject(s) - gardens, emotional reticence, Yorkshire bluffness - still descends into Disneyfied soppiness once or twice too often. The kids are fantastic, as is Philip Quast as Archie ... just don't take the 12-year-old who thinks culture begins and ends with Eminem.

What The Secret Garden does illustrate is the sheer scope of the RSC's current operation. In all the talk about theatrical expansionism - the Almeida's bid for World Domination, ditto the Royal Court and the National Theatre - the RSC still tends to get overlooked. Noble finds this intensely frustrating and unfair: "When I cut back the time we spent at the Barbican from 12 months to six, I said that London wouldn't lose out," he says. "And statistically more Londoners see RSC shows now than they did when we were at the Barbican full-time." By way of illustration, he ticks off the venues which housed the RSC across the capital last year: the Young Vic (A Servant to Two Masters, followed by Tales of Ovid); Sadler's Wells (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe); the New Ambassadors (A Servant to Two Masters, again), plus the Palace Theatre where Les Mis still runs (and of course those two theatres within the Barbican complex, albeit for six months only). The Aldwych simply adds another venue to the portfolio. In fact, it's only because the RSC slashed its annual tenancy at the Barbican by six months, claims Noble, that he has the time to send the RSC diaspora into the West End and beyond.

Noble talks about "de-institutionalising" the RSC, which in practice and layman's terms means, I think, running it like a modern business, with all the competitive instinct and financial wheeler-dealing that this implies. About time too, you might think. He admits that the company went through a rough patch three years ago, when the critics bayed for blood and the artistic direction seemed to limp a little, and occasionally hobble. "We had to fracture the model to rebuild it," he says, "and we're just beginning to reap the benefits, I think. Now we're much more nimble. We're fitter." Partly this is because the RSC has grasped the nettle of public/private funding, and now actively seeks out co-production partners - often in America - with whom to stage its more ambitious work.

Noble is also returning to old RSC traditions and commissioning new, contemporary plays on a scale not really seen since the days of The Warehouse, the studio theatre used by the company in the late Seventies. The first loose trilogy - by Martin McDonagh, Peter Whelan and David Edgar - deals quite specifically with modern-era politics. So is this Noble spotting a gap in the market - since the Almeida has to an extent assumed squatters' rights in RSC territory, and the National Theatre no longer addresses the State of the Nation with quite the urgency which characterised previous years?

"I wouldn't say that," he replies diplomatically. "We've certainly had to reposition ourselves and take charge of our destiny, yes. And of course, we want this to be a company where ideas can flourish."

Which no one, of course, disputes. But what about Shakespeare? Reinvention also means taking risks, which explains Noble's plans to stage all eight History plays in the space of one week across three London venues (The Barbican Theatre, the Pit and the Young Vic), a 25-hour marathon which crowns the year-long project to produce, in chronological order, every History play from Richard II to Richard III, with all the Henries in between.

A programme which includes that kind of ambition alongside the far safer The Secret Garden exactly defines, I think, the kind of nimble-footed mix that Noble seeks for the RSC. Just remember to buy a box of tissues before you see the latter.

The Secret Garden