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Completism has become a maddening obsession these days with the BBC’s Radio Three. Every crotchet of Beethoven given in a week, every demisemiquaver of Webern encompassed within hours, two weeks of wall-to-wall Bach before Christmas, and, most recently, Wagner’s Ring spun into a single day. What’s wrong is that good music craves total attention. Not even St Cecilia can manage that for longer than a couple of hours at a stretch.
The RSC’s festival of the Complete Works of the bard is a different matter. Basically because it’s spread out over a year, allowing the determined playgoer time enough between shows to recoup his concentration. Writing at the start of the festival, I suspect its most valuable aspect will be not its completism, but its bringing to Stratford choice examples of Shakespeare production from anywhere but there. The shocks and surprises in store cannot but stretch our own proprietorial preconceptions.
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