When Michael Boyd was appointed artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002, he inherited nothing far short of a shambles.
His brilliant but foolhardy predecessor, Adrian Noble, had been allowed by a weak board of governors to abandon the Barbican theatre, leased to the company by the City of London at a peppercorn rent; tried to instigate a more “democratic” but imperfectly costed method of presenting the RSC’s work throughout Britain; messed up the successful annual residencies in Newcastle; decided to demolish and rebuild the Stratford-upon-Avon main house; and had run up a deficit of nearly £3m.
