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Adrian Noble, artistic director of the RSC, sees life beyond Shakespeare. He tells Lyn Gardner about his plans for musicals, the West End and the 'global brand'
Adrian Noble bounces into a Covent Garden restaurant looking as if he hasn't a care in the world. This is a man who loves his job as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has been doing it for a decade now and sees no reason that he shouldn't be doing it for a long time to come.
Noble is preparing for the opening of his production of The Secret Garden, the RSC's first West End musical since Les Misérables, a show whose success has effectively cushioned the RSC from financial disaster for the past 15 years. Noble may have wiped out the £3.5m deficit he inherited when he took over the company in March 1991, but a Les Mis-style success for The Secret Garden would be very welcome. Very much a new-style artistic supremo, Noble talks not of plays but of "product" and of the strength of the RSC brand. His latest wheeze is to sign the company up with Andrew Wylie, the man with the reputation of being the world's sharkiest literary agent. "Andrew is simply the best," says Noble. "He's brilliant. He likes the work of the company and we like him. People know about the RSC in every country in the world. We are a global brand and we create product that is of interest to a lot of people, and we are seeking a way by which we can find outlets for that work. It may be workshops, study aids or DVDs, but Andrew will negotiate the best commercial deals."
No doubt the RSC's massive This England cycle of history plays - which reaches its climax in April, when London audiences will be able to see the entire cycle performed chronologically from Richard II through to Richard III - will soon be available on DVD, all 1,413 minutes of it. If there is any project that symbolises Noble's reign at the RSC, it is this. Noble has been its architect and midwife, although curiously he has opted to direct The Secret Garden rather than any of the Shakespeare plays in the cycle. Noble doesn't find it odd. He thinks it is just part and parcel of what it means to be a Shakespearean company in the 21st century, a question he has been thinking about a lot. So what does it mean exactly? "It's a company that draws its inspiration from the Renaissance and provides us with epic, mythic stories but at the same time gives us a compassionate insight into the human condition."
In short, a company that is as likely to embrace a 10-year-old Broadway musical such as The Secret Garden as it is to offer Hamlet or Richard II or a little-known Jacobean revenge tragedy. As far as Noble is concerned, The Secret Garden and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which he also directed for the company, are quite as interesting as any of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, he enthuses about the similarities: "Both draw heavily from Shakespeare. The Secret Garden closely resembles As You Like It - the story of a girl who is banished, enters a forest and through growing self-realisation brings an end to chaos. It is the story of all Shakespeare's plays from Henry V to Twelfth Night."
Certainly Noble sees both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Secret Garden, which opened in Stratford-upon-Avon before Christmas, as an attempt to change the audience profile of the company, particularly in that town. The RSC's presence sometimes seems a burdensome irrelevance to local people, who may welcome the influx of visitors it brings to the town, but who never step inside any of the three theatres themselves. "I noticed that The Secret Garden encouraged a change of attitude in the people of the West Midlands. While it was on, they regarded the theatre as theirs in a way that they often don't when we are doing Shakespeare."
Only one subject dents Noble's good mood, and that's this year's Olivier awards, in which the RSC received only one nomination while the much- maligned National Theatre had a clutch of nominations and won several prizes. "It is outrageous and unjust and in no way reflects the artistic achievements of the RSC in the year 2000. I've no more to say on the subject except that it's a disgrace, a real disgrace."
But apart from this cloud, Noble reckons that he is a pretty contented man. After a long period when it sometimes seemed that the RSC was controlling him, he believes he is now firmly controlling the RSC: "Change always brings opposition. But in the last couple of years, it has become a fantastic place to work. There are some very talented people in the company, and I now feel we are firing on all cylinders. When I think of some of the work we have done, I feel like a very proud dad. Over the next two months, we will be bringing an amazing body of work to London including This England and Tantalus, as well as a festival of new plays. It is only possible because we've been aggressively entrepreneurial. I am not going to apologise for that."
