Thanks to the World Shakespeare Festival, 2012 has shown us how other countries interpret his plays, but for the Winter season in the Swan the RSC takes its turn to play host in the foreign exchange, staging three international classics that can be seen as Shakespeare's contemporaries - either in when they were written, or the historical period they deal with. Alexander Pushkin deliberately intended to take inspiration from Shakespeare in the way he put
Boris Godunov together, and certain moments do mirror scenes from his plays. Adrian Mitchell's verse translation also occasionally references particular well-known Shakespearean lines. So we open with echoes of
Julius Caesar as Boris Godunov (Lloyd Hutchinson) is repeatedly offered the Russian throne by the people, and keeps turning it down. It'll take a month of pleading but Godunov
will accept the position of Tsar.
