My first trip to Stratford with my now wife to see The Tempest lead to a lifetime love of Shakespeare - Adrian Mongredien, Friend

My first trip to RSC Stratford was in 1963, and my reaction to it is succinctly document in my diary entries for 5th-7th April of that year (see copy below with copy ticket stub).

In April 1963 I was aged 20 and working as a junior clerk in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. My girlfriend Kate was a student at Swansea University aged 19. On Friday 5th April I hitchhiked up to Birmingham to stay with Kate at her parental home. On that night Kate suggested we spend the next day, Saturday at Stratford and see if we could get standby tickets for the RSC afternoon matinee. I had never seen a Shakespeare play performed before. It sounded like an interesting day out. 

We had very limited funds so we hitched to Stratford. Our last lift was from a Midland Red bus driver who took pity on us and gave us a lift most of the way, dropping us off on the outskirts of Stratford (before the stop where the inspector usually got on the bus). We walked in and went and queued up at the theatre.  

We managed to get standing tickets at the last minute and I duly saw my first Shakespeare play The Tempest. My girlfriend was already a live theatre fan and a regular at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. I had been thoroughly put off Shakespeare by studying The Merchant of Venice at Grammar School in Wallasey on the Wirral, for a year for GCE English O Level without ever being able to see the play performed.  

I had become a fan of the cinema, in particular the Swedish cinema of Ingmar Bergman, a French New Wave films and the Italian Cinema of Fellini, Visconti and later Antonioni.  

My trip to Stratford didn’t change anything immediately but it opened my eyes to the depths in Shakespeare’s plays, the characters contained within who live with us still, and the excitement of seeing a live performance, brilliantly performed.  

Two years later on the day of our engagement (Saturday 16th July 1965) we returned to Stratford with some friends, on a lovely sunny afternoon to see The Merchant of Venice. I was finally able to enjoy and appreciate a play which I had previously written off.  
  
Since our marriage and move to the East Midlands in 1966 we have enjoyed well over 200 trips to Stratford to see plays at the three theatres. Memorable performance include Antony Sher and Harriet Walter’s Macbeth. The Spanish Golden Age series, The Jacobean comedy season and of course Greg Doran’s Canterbury Tales. The recent staging of The Tempest with Simon Russell Beale was remarkable and almost equalled the impact of my first trip to Stratford all those years ago.