Don't try to kid us that the Bard is an alternative to clubbing

He's hot. He's horny. He's... William Shakespeare. Don't take it from me. The man clearly straining every muscle to make the Bard sound the perfect alternative to clubbing is the new artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Michael Boyd. In an interview, Mr Boyd was quoted as saying: "He is a very horny writer. The plays are obscene. Take Twelfth Night: 'Some have greatness thrust upon them.' That is actually a come-on." Well, if you say so, though I don't commend it as a seduction technique. Mr Boyd sounds to me like an RSC director with a deficit and some empty houses to fill.

Shakespeare has sex in abundance, as he has violence, love, humour, tenderness, passion and politics. He also has exquisite verse, but he demands some study and plenty of concentration. Strange, directors never seem to mention that as they continue to delude themselves that young audiences will fall for the "hot and horny" descriptions and drop everything to buy tickets.

And how can he be made suitably "hot" at the moment, Mr Boyd? Ah, now here the RSC's new man uses a wondrous logic. Actors, he says, want to feel that the RSC is "really hot again". One way of doing that and getting people like Nicole Kidman, whom he singles out for mention, is to build a "film production facility" next to the theatre as part of a new complex. "That's exciting and could be very attractive to actors," he says.

So to tempt the Hollywood stars, whom Mr Boyd seems to think the RSC needs, he would lure them not by saying they could be a part of the greatest classical theatre company in the world, but that if they play their cards right, they could be part of a small-scale British film. The box office failure of Ken Branagh's last Shakespeare on film, Love's Labours Lost, does not suggest a great market out there. And when I last spoke with Miss Kidman (see, I can name-drop along with the best RSC directors) she said she really wanted to act with a major subsidised company in Britain. She didn't mention swapping Hollywood for the Stratford upon Avon film-production facility.

I would, though, support the filming for television of the most successful RSC, National Theatre and West End productions, since we have so little record of the great stage performances. Whether any TV channel would actually show them is another matter. Our national playwright is not high on Greg Dyke's list of priorities. Michael Boyd could usefully leave his reading of Twelfth Night for a moment, take a cold shower, and go to see Mr Dyke and impress upon him the need for the BBC to screen a Shakespeare play more than once a decade. The RSC could indeed become the corporation's resident company. Two productions a year would not be a lot to ask. And it would be marvellous if Mr Boyd could sell the idea to Mr Dyke as being a part of the BBC's education remit, taking the BBC upmarket and bringing the cream of the British acting profession to the small screen.

OK, I admit it. This is the BBC we're talking about. Pitching it as "hot and horny" is more likely to get that prime-time slot.

¿ Now if you want someone who was really hot and horny, you want Vincent Van Gogh. Last Monday saw the West End transfer of Nicholas Wright's Vincent in Brixton, the story of the young Van Gogh's sojurn in London and Wright's imagined relationship between Van Gogh and a much older woman. Richard Eyre's gripping production saw the welcome return to the West End stage of Clare Higgins, one of the great and most emotionally affecting British actresses. She will never be a household name like Nicole Kidman, but is even more worthy of Michael Boyd's pursuit.

It was Richard Eyre who noted a year ago that high prices for programmes and drinks were discouraging young people from attending the theatre. I have to report that prices of both at Vincent in Brixton were unacceptably high. I also have to report that the production sent you home so fulfilled that, just this once, it hardly seemed to matter.

¿ There might be a little more than meets the eye to the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, which opened at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday. For a start, this was the first time that the RFH had been used for properly staged musical theatre; so a new West End theatre venue was quietly born. But I was more interested in the producer. It was Raymond Gubbay, once solely a promoter of middle-of-the-road classical concerts, then an aggressive and very public challenger to the Royal Opera House with his arena opera productions at relatively cheap prices. Now he has decided to take on the likes of Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber as a musicals impresario.

There are whispers that the National Theatre was keen to stage Follies, and is none too pleased with Gubbay getting in first. From what I know of Raymond Gubbay, upsetting the oppo is his favourite way of rounding off a successful week.

d.lister@independent.co.uk