Has Michael Boyd just taken on the worst job in theatre? He says running the Royal Shakespeare Company is “tricky,” not bad. “Recently, it’s been very difficult to resist the feeling of the RSC being the largest machine in an entrepreneurial theatrical world, but what we’ve actually got to be is the alternative to the entrepreneurial world. We’ve got to be a bit of a bastion of idealism, a bastion of research and development. We need room to experiment with our work, not always feeling the need to programme conservatively. We do Shakespeare for goodness’ sake. That’s commercial enough in its own right.’ He wants to return the RSC to the cutting edge of British theatre.”