RSC announce return to original home in the Barbican for new season Gregory Doran's first full season of programming as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, covering next summer and beyond, might be summed up by the phrase "back to the future." One thing that stands out from the slew of forthcoming work announced this morning is the fact that Doran is re-cementing the company's relationship with that concrete bastion of the arts spurned by the RSC back in 2002, the Barbican Centre. After his Richard II starring David Tennant (the fastest-selling show in the company's history) this autumn he will move on to direct Henry IV Parts I and II, notably casting his partner Antony Sher as Falstaff; and both these Stratford productions will follow Richard onto the Barbican main-stage towards the end of next year. Unveiling his plans, Doran revealed "a three year collaboration" with the Barbican, outlining too "a creative learning programme of events and education projects." Thus the "whirligig of time" brings in its many ironies: under Adrian Noble, the company renounced the base custom-built for it by the City of London Corporation. Having slightly lost its way in the capital under Michael Boyd - despite regaining its artistic sense of direction more generally - the RSC appears to accept the Barbican not only as the least worst option but with a blushing appreciation for the creative respect it now enjoys. The danger is that audiences get so used to enjoying Shakespeare at this address again that when the RSC finally emerges from its limbo period, and finds a lasting solution to the question of a London home, there's a public outcry about it moving on again. These longstanding issues should ideally be addressed by the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016; but in the mean-time, and with the 450th anniversary of the Bard's birth in 2014 providing a useful immediate focus, Doran has a breathing space. And in terms of the programme at Stratford, there are no quibbles about what's on offer. He has astutely chosen to bring in some of the brightest young directing talent around. Rising star Simon Godwin - whose Strange Interlude at the National is a revelation - will put The Two Gentlemen of Verona on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage for the first time in 45 years. And in a female-centred season in the Swan entitled "Roaring Girls," overseen by Erica Whyman, the ascent of Polly Findlay - who directed Antigone at the National - continues apace with her revival of the anonymously penned Arden of Faversham - a play, only twice before staged at the RSC, that contains "the largest role for a woman in all Elizabethan drama." Also in that Swan splurge of work by Shakespeare's contemporaries - which re-asserts the value of Stratford's second space in looking at the Jacobethan context of his age - we'll see The Roaring Girl by Middleton and Dekker, directed by Jo Davies, and Webster's The White Devil, directed by the ever-exciting Maria Aberg. Just where things will go in terms of new writing, and the experimentation we were promised with The Other Place, remains to be fully declared. When I interviewed Doran at the start of the year, he was talking about a strategy of "less is more." He's holding true to that vision. In his press launch today he declared his "intention to stage each of Shakespeare's plays just once in the next six years to 2019, making every play an event. This means a whole generation of students and theatregoers can journey with us through Shakespeare's Complete Works - on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, on tour, in London, online or live on screen. That's very different from the 2006 jamboree, when the company did every Shakespeare play in the single year. What's emerging is a twin approach of reaching out to audiences UK-wide, with the introduction of live screenings to cinemas (along the NT Live model) and a renewed commitment to touring (13 weeks" worth next year), together with a process of consolidation and retrenchment. It's not necessarily the stuff of wild sensation and big headlines but it may well be the recipe for sustained success.