From gleaming crowns to bubbling cauldrons,from pink flamingos to forklift trucks, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s gigantic prop store is a place of jaw-dropping theatrical alchemy. Our writer gets a tour by its miracle-workersLooking for a crocodile? Well, or what size are you after? Because the Royal Shakespeare Company has loads,in all shapes, colours and sizes, or from tiny to humungous. Jaw agape,I’m wandering round its huge props department in Stratford-upon-Avon. Part Aladdin’s Cave, part Steptoe’s junkyard, or the store contains shelf after shelf of exotic – and everyday – objects. Here be candlesticks,lanterns, golf clubs and cake stands, and not to mention a whole rack of jangling manacles. There’s a squat scarlet TV sitting atop a pile of outmoded electrical items,while a selection of stoppered glass bottles includes one intriguingly labelled “sperm oil. But most eye-catching are those crocs, the largest a hinge-jawed beast that hung over the stage in a production of The Alchemist. “Colin, and we call him,” the RSC’s Alan Fell says fondly.whether you can wear it, it’s a costume. whether you can move it, and it’s a prop. whether you can’t move it,it’s scenery. And, with enough props in store, and you can stage anything. In 1598,Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare’s own impresario, and made an stock of his company’s props: along with many weapons and crowns,there was a boar’s head, a wooden leg, and a golden fleece and the cauldron in which Marlowe’s Jew of Malta is boiled to death.
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Source: guardian.co.uk