Performance History

This chapter offers a critical review of every Royal Shakespeare Company production of a Restoration Comedy from 1967 to 2019. Using promptbooks and other resources from the RSC archive, it explores how director/dramaturgs have adapted the plays, how designers have visualized them, and the wide variety of speaking and physical styles actors have brought to them. Three phases are identified: the Aldwych years to the early 1980s; the first 14 years of The Swan Theatre; and the post-millennium period.