Rainbow Shakespeare returns to Worthing open-air stage

The plays this year are As You Like It (July 12-17) and The Merry Wives Of Windsor (July 19-24).

Company founder and artistic director Nick Young said: “It does seem a long time but throughout that long time I found so many people come up to me, people that I've never met before, saying ‘Are you going to do the Shakespeare again? It is so much part of our lives.’ And one lovely couple said the Rainbow Shakespeare has imbued the garden with its very own particular kind of magic. I was sorry for the people and for myself (that the productions could not go ahead during the pandemic). It made me quite angry the fact that there was no way that sitting in the open air was going to give people Covid and that people were being denied something that was really special to them. I do think we could have been allowed to carry on but it is wonderful to be back. But the other thing that I really missed was the ensemble feeling of the company, the fact that we have worked with people over so many years and that some people do come from so far away to be part of it. I think I've always been lucky and able to create an ensemble company. The years I spent at the Connaught it was like one big family and I always feel that you get an insight into people and the audience. The great thing is when you can feel that the actors are all playing off each other and enjoying working together rather than being a series of individuals and I do think that's really important in Shakespeare. These people are really working together and that's what makes it happen. I've always found that a company is either more or less than the sum of its parts, a bit like a couple. A couple is not just two people. It is either more than two people or less than two people. The people either enhance each other or they do not and with Shakespeare you get so much more out of it when you feel that everyone is really working together.”

Usually N ick would put on a comedy and perhaps a tragedy or a history play: “But I do think people this year really want a laugh. They have gone through so much over the last two years. But my own belief is that there is a lot of comedy in the tragedies if you know where to look just as in the comedies there are also a lot of serious points being made. But Merry Wives is just such a glorious piece of knockabout comedy. It's the most domestic in a way of Shakespeare's com edies and the one most set in Elizabethan England. It is not done that often but it is starting to be done more, I think.”

Tickets in advance through Worthing Theatres box office on 01903 206206 or via their website wtm.uk. Tickets can also be bought on the gate 90 minutes before each show (cash only).