The RSC made a mistake

Adrian Noble's controversial decision last year to pull the RSC out of the Barbican has effectively made the world's most famous theatre company as homeless in London as the tramps on the Strand. That is the opinion of Antony Sher, one of the RSC's most prized actors, and his outspoken views underline the depth of feeling in the company about its uncertain future in the city.

Since the dramatic announcement that the RSC was to relinquish its London base, there have been serious question marks over the company's ability to make an impact in the theatre capital. The recent experimental season at the Roundhouse was a box-office calamity. And the core Barbican audience has yet to adopt the Haymarket as the venue of choice for mainhouse Stratford transfers.

Other more vulnerable shows, like the current daring season of rarely performed plays by Jacobean and Elizabethan writers, in which Sher is starring at the Gielgud, have had to scramble into the capital under their own steam. The sell-out season at the Swan explores the rich pickings of writers who have generally been overshadowed by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare.

For Sher, the hero of so many great RSC productions, the near loss of a London run for an original hit like this would have been a tragic state of affairs. Noble's shock resignation in April, which takes effect next year after his production of Ibsen's Brand starring Ralph Fiennes, is to Sher's way of thinking a candid admission of the failure of Noble's London policy.

Sher's anger isn't directed at the company he loves, or even Adrian Noble, who he thinks has done a terrific job as artistic director since he took the helm over a decade ago. It is aimed squarely at Noble's lapse of judgment about the RSC's ability to find easy new homes in London. It was a moment "of complete lunacy and we paid dearly for it," says Sher. "It seemed like a bad idea in principle. In practice it is a complete disaster." Sher and his fellow company of 28 actors were very nearly the first casualties of Noble's "lunatic idea". After the season finished with a flourish at Newcastle they were all due to receive redundancy notices.

But thanks to the intervention of two West End producers, the company has won a London run for this extraordinary season of "lost" gems. In the hands of a lesser company these plays would be lucky to be written up as curios. But directed by the sharpest new RSC talents - Dominic Cooke, Anthony Clark, Lucy Pitman-Wallace, and Sean Holmes - and supervised by the RSC's associate director, Gregory Doran, this motley season has won one sparkling review after another.

To the surprise and perhaps shock of the management, the original Stratford run was an unprecedented box office draw. "We were doing exactly what the RSC should do: a classical outfit performing rare classical plays.

Sher admits: "Nobody, myself included, expected it to be such a success. It's given me enormous pleasure to eat my words again and again." The season sold out its scheduled runs at Stratford and Newcastle. In normal circumstances a transfer to London would have been routine. But with no Barbican to go to, the RSC management were clearly facing an embarrassing predicament.

"They couldn't possibly do anything with us. Where would they take us?" asks Sher rhetorically. "There was no Barbican, and therefore no protected environment for a specialised project like this to survive." And presumably there was little hard-core faith that these fragile Jacobeans would survive the commercial rigours of the West End with its million- pound musicals, American film stars, and the jaw-dropping costs of hiring a major London playhouse.

What Sher now unfolds is a remarkable theatrical survival story. A last-minute plea by Doran to Thelma Holt convinced the charismatic West End producer that the project could only be saved by bringing the entire season into the white heat of the West End.