The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage two highly experimental novels, written almost 100 years apart and posing serious conundrums for adaptation, according to co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey. Virginia Woolf's 1925 "day in the life" classic Mrs Dalloway and Susanna Clarke's otherworldly 2020 award-winner Piranesi grapple with what they described as "a century-old theatrical preoccupation: the exploration of inner life on stage".
Harvey will direct Mrs Dalloway, adapted by Zoe Cooper, and said it would be "hugely challenging" to "bring the inside out" from Woolf's novel, which uses stream of consciousness as the eponymous heroine gives a party whose guests' thoughts intermingle with her own. Cooper, said Harvey, has "created this extraordinary sense that we as an audience are flowing in and out of people's minds, in and out of different moments in their histories". Mrs Dalloway opens in the Swan theatre in April and will be the third major adaptation of the novel staged in England within a year: Kit Green's one-woman performance recently toured and Holly Robinson's new version opens at the Yard in London in March.
Piranesi, which finds a man trapped in a labyrinthine mansion with an ocean on one floor and the sky on another, won the Women's prize for fiction in 2021. For the first 20 pages, said Evans, you have "no idea what's going on". The adaptation by Sami Ibrahim will be directed in the Swan theatre by the ever-inventive Ned Bennett who, when offered the opportunity by Evans, apparently said: "I don't know how to do this – so yes!"
The announcement of the two new productions – which Harvey said required "big lungs" to be staged alongside the works of Shakespeare – comes amid a string of other literary adaptations by the RSC whose blockbuster hit Matilda was based on Roald Dahl's bestseller. A two-part production of George Eliot's Middlemarch opens on Thursday, its Christmas show is based on Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, and Games of Thrones: The Mad King – a prequel to the George RR Martin fantasy novels – had a sold-out season in Stratford this summer and arrives in London next year.
Evans said it "just so happens" that two of the new productions announced on Thursday are based on books. The others – all staged in the Royal Shakespeare theatre – are Coriolanus starring Damien Molony and directed by Elizabeth Freestone; Richard II with Elizabeth Debicki in the title role and directed by Daniel Raggett; and Romeo and Juliet, directed by Joanna Bowman "as if the lovers are going to live" according to Evans. There will be a tour for Robin Belfield's 80-minute version of The Comedy of Errors, presented in association with Cardiff's Sherman theatre and directed by Francesca Goodridge, also presented in the Other Place.
The four Shakespeare productions will demonstrate the playwright's mastery across the genres, said Evans and Harvey. Born With Teeth, a play about Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that was staged in the West End last year, will replace the RSC's planned Othello, postponed while its star Sharon D Clarke undergoes treatment for cancer. Casting for Born With Teeth, which originally starred Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, has not yet been confirmed. Bluemel called Liz Duffy Adams's play "a horny Elizabethan whirlwind".
Harvey and Evans said that the RSC is working with a cohort of six writers on new scripts, the group mentored by Zoe Cooper alongside playwright Stewart Pringle whose new family drama Brock's Mill will be presented at the Other Place in the spring.
The co-artistic directors, who took over in 2023, said they faced a "continually challenging" financial situation, even after a recent restructuring that included redundancies and a reduced cost base. Evans stressed that the company will be repaying its Covid recovery fund loan, through annual instalments of £1.2m, until 2040.