For many years Royal Shakespeare Company's productions have followed a settled routine -a season in Stratford from April to January, followed by a residence in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and subsequent transfer of plays to Barbican in London. Now, as part of a change in company's touring policy, Stratford season has been retimed (October-August), residencies increased in number (two during September-November), and stay in London cut to five months (December-April). To facilitate this change, 1996 Stratford season ran from April to September, and repertoire was shipped immediately to London. Revivals of Adrian Noble's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Cheny Orchard played in Stratford for a few weeks (prior to a tour and a London West End transfer, respectively), and new-style 1996-97 Stratford season opened in November with Eveiyman at The Other Place, Henry VIII at Swan, and Much Ado About Nothing at main house. The consequences of this change-particularly in terms of economics-have been hotly debated, and it has been suggested that RSC's enhanced commitment to the regions might make itself felt at expense of other companies touring Shakespeare. Defenders of Barbican, both as a theater and, with RSC in residence, as part of capital's cultural provision, have been incensed. Fears have been expressed about fate of other companies if Arts Council should decide that RSC residencies in Plymouth and Newcastle should be considered in allocating funds to local or touring ensembles in southwest and northeast. Meanwhile, Stratford theaters, with their regular local clientele of Midlands theatergoers (including schools and colleges) as well as considerable passing trade of tourists, must overcome season's opening being launched at a time-late autumn-when local audiences often dwindle and continuing through first quarter of new year, when tourism is at its lowest. After a brief visit from a revival of IanJudge's 1994 Twelfth Night (21 March-10 April), 1996 short season opened in mid-April and offered three Shakespeare plays at main house (As You Like It, Macbeth, and Troilus and Cressida) and one at The Other Place (The Comedy of Errors, prior to a regional tour), where The Learned Ladies (a version of Moliere's Les Femmes Savantes) and Peter Whelan's new play, The Herbal Bed, were also staged. Webster's The White Devil, Three Hours after Marriage (Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot), and Richard Nelson's A General from America were presented at Swan. Stephen Pimlott's As You Like It was a strangely muted affair. It began promisingly, with an energetic and physically formidable Orlando (Liam Cunningham) fretting dangerously in front of a cold, aluminum-colored drop, and moved to an equally frigid court, an aluminum-box set with a shiny floor and occasional steely pillar. The court costumes were rich, somber, and elaborately Elizabethan, with vivid yellow, green, and red of Touchstone's motley as principal source of warmth. The usurper (Calum Convey), who was given to alternately menacing and vulnerable grimaces and who swooned at news of Celia's desertion, was clearly a tortured soul, and his court was a chilly, threatening place. The Forest of Arden was at first scarcely more welcoming: same metal walls, a few more pillars (now seeming like denuded tree trunks), and a snowstorm. For exiled Duke Senior (Robert Demeger) to exclaim Sweet are uses of adversity in teeth of a blizzard, while his men huddled and stamped,