Adrian Lester and Alfred Enoch lead Royal Shakespeare Company's ‘global' new season
Adrian Lester transforming into Cyrano de Bergerac, Alfred Enoch taking on Henry V and a lauded reboot of The Forsyte Saga are part of a new Royal Shakespeare Company season its co-artistic directors say represents a bold 'global' vision for the institution.
Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey announced the latest productions on Tuesday, saying the new programme was a celebration of globally inspired stories, 'thrillingly told by the most exciting theatre artists of today'.
Lester will star in Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson's new 'quick-witted' version of Cyrano de Bergerac, and follows in the footsteps of Antony Sher, who played the role in a celebrated Gregory Doran-directed production for the RSC in 1997.
Enoch, known for his role in the Harry Potter films, will team up with Harvey for her version of Henry V after the pair worked on a critically acclaimed version of Pericles in 2024.
Pericles was Harvey's first production for RSC since starting as co-director and she will be hoping for a similarly well-received project. The Guardian's Mark Lawson praised last year's collaboration between Enoch and Harvey, who he said couldn't 'disguise the play's peculiarities but proves its beauties to be equally deep and its political intelligence acute'.
A two-part production of The Forsyte Saga, which is based on John Galsworthy's books, comes to the Swan theatre in November 2025 after a successful run last year at the Park theatre in London.
Josh Roche's production has won plaudits already, with the Observer praising the minimalist approach. Susannah Clapp said 'the family epic unfolds with intimate clarity on an almost bare stage', adding that – although the two parts could be seen separately – it was 'satisfying to see them in one gulp'. There will be 14 opportunities to see the productions in one sitting during the run, which ends on 10 January 2026.
The production isn't without its controversies: a rape scene horrified some viewers when the books were adapted for television by the BBC in 1967 and ITV in 2002.
The outgoing artistic director of the Bush theatre, Lynette Linton brings a new musical adaptation of William Kamkwamba's award-winning memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, to the Swan theatre next February.
Other productions include Daniel Raggett directing Sam Heughan and Lia Williams, who will star in Macbeth; while Whitney White brings All Is But Fantasy, an ambitious production billed as 'four stories staged across two gig-theatre performances set against a live soundtrack of rock, pop, indie and gospel'.
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Evans and Harvey said: 'From Malawi or Manhattan, through French fields, Scottish heaths, mythical lands and Giant country, our 2025/26 programme celebrates what we believe a 21st-century RSC can and should be: global in ambition and outlook, open and collaborative in nature and continuously redefining how Shakespeare and great storytelling can bring joy, connection and improve our understanding of one-another.
It was recently announced that Ncuti Gatwa, who recently concluded his role on Doctor Who, will star alongside Edward Bluemel in RSC's Shakespeare vMarlowe drama, Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, which has its West End premiere at Wyndham's theatre in August.
The joint artistic directors have previously secured 25,000 tickets at £25 in an attempt to 'throw open the doors' to a more diverse crowd, while James Ijames's Pulitzer prize-winning play, Fat Ham, was part of their spring 2025 season, one of three versions of Hamlet the RSC was staging.
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