A Royal Shakespeare Company Christmas show needs a big name or two doesn’t it?

That was certainly the thinking behind the RSC’s 2006 production of Merry Wives: The Musical, which had quite a few stars on board – not least Judi Dench and Simon Callow – with stunning direction by Gregory Doran, who’s also a big theatrical name that gets bums on seats.

It had been the case a year before that with the company’s excellent production of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations – starring Sian Philips as Miss Haversham – as it had been in the late 19th century when actor/manager Frank Benson tried desperately to get Sir Henry Irving to head a star cast, only to be thwarted by Irving’s death.

Pantomime is the same: get a biggish name (and quite a few Hollywood B list actors are coming over to give panto a try) and build a show around them; and most Christmas shows need to have an element of pantomime about them, and, in some respects – not least a clutch of goodies and baddies – Arabian Nights is no different.

So, when the cast details of this season’s RSC Christmas show, Arabian Nights, was published there wasn’t a big name to be seen – several familiar names, but no big names; no queuing all along Waterside names, as there had been when David Tennent was booked to play Hamlet a couple of years ago, or even Richard Wilson’s recent Shakespeare debut as Malvolio.

There was no real excitement either – anticipation yes, but no buzz. And the previews didn’t really pull in the punters, which, I suppose, could have been due to the dreadful weather and the financial down turn. This became obvious, with only a handful of theatre-goers in the Dirty Duck having a pre-show drink or meal, and the Duck is always a good barometer.

Then, as Christmas approached, and the first night was out of the way audience numbers began to increase, and the word on the street was that the RSC had a brilliant show on their hands. Come Christmas week the Duck was full to bursting, with some genuine excitement as people talked about a great ensemble piece of RSC theatre.

And, of course, the idea of ensemble has been at the very heart of the RSC – under Michael Boyd’s artistic directorship – for quite some time now, and something that came fully to fruition with the two-and-a-half-year marathon that was the staging of Shakespeare’s so called ‘history plays’ by a dedicated – and tough – bunch of actors, musicians, and stage technicians. To find out more about that epic piece of theatre read actor Nick Asbury’s superb book, ‘Exit Pursued by a Badger’.