What’s going on at the Royal Shakespeare Company?

It’s December 2025, and the Royal Shakespeare Company are performing their annual carol concert at the Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s normally a time to come together and celebrate. But today feels different. They’re performing ‘Fairytale of New York’, but with one crucial twist – it’s staged in the same manner as Haydn’s infamous Farewell Symphony.

In 1772, Haydn and his musicians were working for a Hungarian prince in his rural summer palace. The stay stretched on longer than expected and eventually, the musicians became eager to return to their families. So when the prince requested they stay to develop a new symphony, Haydn wrote one with an enormous hint woven into its final movement. As the symphony slowed, musician after musician finished his part, put out his candle and left the stage. It worked: the musicians were permitted to return to Eisenstadt the next day. 

But what if the musicians don’t want to go offstage?

Now, two and a half centuries later, musician after musician stops playing until the last notes of the Christmas anthem echo through the parish church, leaving only the piano playing. Just as in Haydn’s time, the staging nods to a disagreement between musicians and their employer. Because the lack of festive spirit isn’t a coincidence.

Burdened with a £5m shortfall, the RSC announced last year that they’d be cutting their workforce by 11% through a voluntary redundancy programme, followed by compulsory redundancies. Cuts and redundancies are a common story for the arts but, in Stratford – a town whose identity is intrinsically linked with its theatre – the cuts feel more personal.

Among those the most affected by the redundancies was the music department. While former head of music Bruce O’Neil took voluntary redundancy, the last two in-house musicians were made redundant, along with a music manager and music assistant, meaning that effectively, the RSC’s music department ceases to exist. 

I’m talking to John over the phone, he’s a freelancer for the RSC who does not want to be named. Talking about the carol concert, he says there would be a “school concert vibe” at ones he had attended before, where directors would stand up and congratulate everyone. This time? Nothing. There was an awkward air, John recalls. That’s not a surprise considering that while compulsory redundancies had been announced, no decisions had been taken — those attending had no idea whether they’d still have a job on the other side of Christmas.

It also felt particularly sad, John recalls, because it was O’Neil’s final concert. “Bruce called the band 'last orders' and all this sort of stuff, so it was all very poignant.” The dramatic Pogues rendition was a musical rebellion of sorts, and the clip was uploaded onto YouTube as part of the widely popular petition which called to reverse the RSC’s decision to cut their music department. 

The RSC, one of the UK’s most well-known theatre companies, is undergoing drastic change. Cost-cutting, say the bosses. But it’s not just the cuts — insiders say there’s been a change in culture. Referencing the Christmas concert again, John says there was a clear “us and them” feeling between staff and the upper management. (The RSC’s executive team told us they “recognize and acknowledge the strength of feeling around this issue” and explain they “took on board feedback from staff about possible alternatives to the proposals.”)

There’s also a shift away from the company feeling of the RSC, as actors and musicians on long-term contracts are being replaced by a revolving door of freelancers. There's a national impact of course – with an increasing number of theatres moving away from the repertory system where the same company of actors would perform a rotating schedule of productions each season, and towards plays being self-contained, where one group of actors performs one play for a set amount of time — usually a month or two.

Yet closer to home, there are fears this new-look RSC has taken a further hammer blow to opportunities for West Midlanders trying to work in what Stephen Brown, the Midlands Regional Organiser for the Musicians’ Union, calls the “worst-funded region in England for the arts”. Blame is being laid at the door of the RSC’s newest co-artistic directors Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans. As one freelancer commented, “the RSC previously was an entity that develops and changes and people have come in and put their own spin on it but there’s been a through line and it feels like what  [Harvey and Evans have] done is just snip that line and started again.” When we put the claims of a changed music department to the RSC, they told us that the structural changes made were not exclusive to the music department, but “touched every area of the RSC’s operations”. They also argued that “this is about building a robust, sustainable financial model to underpin the RSC’s long-term growth.”

But are the pair just taking necessary decisions to ensure the RSC survives a bleak midwinter for arts organisations in Britain? Or are they changing the theatre beyond recognition?