THE three tragedies of Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear and a season of obscure plays about obsession mean that this year's Newcastle Royal Shakespeare Company tour won't be laughing all the way to the bank.

Some will read that as the mood of the moment for the world's best-known theatre company, which has just scrapped its £100m re-development of the Stratford-upon-Avon main theatre and gone back to the drawing board.

The years of wrangling may even have assisted the departure of long-time artistic director Adrian Noble. His replacement, Michael Boyd, presents an inaugural season at Newcastle's Theatre Royal featuring star names like Toby Stephens (Hamlet), Greg Hicks (Macbeth) and Corin Redgrave (King Lear), but focusing the spotlight on a separate ensemble of 23 actors in a Spanish Golden Age season at Heaton's People's Theatre.

The Quayside's Live Theatre and the Theatre Royal will be part of a new work season which will see RSC debutante Redgrave performing in the world premiere of Tynan - based on the diaries of infamous theatre critic Kenneth Tynan - by Richard Nelson.

RSC fans are being reminded that tickets do not go on sale for the November 1-27 run until June 30. Then they'll have to be quick because 87 per cent of all seats were snapped up last year.

This 28th tour of Tyneside arrives at a fascinating time of change for the company, according to associate director Dominic Cooke, who is taking charge of the season while directing Macbeth, his main theatre debut.

"We've started a new way of working with actors. The tragedies company started in December with an extended rehearsal period. The idea of training is at the centre of what we do to position the RSC as an organisation, which is about an exploration of how we do Shakespeare and trying to find new ways, new aesthetics and new approaches.

"The RSC has had a history of young talent coming up through the ranks, whether it's been Ralph Fiennes or Fiona Shaw, there have been many leading actors who have started off in lowly positions with us."

The new cycle of London rehearsals and Stratford, Newcastle and London performances with separate ensembles is intended to ensure that young talent is encouraged and not lost in a vast company of performers.

Cooke confesses that, logistically, the current production of Romeo And Juliet cannot transfer to the North-East because it opens in London in the autumn.

The People's Theatre at Heaton is being brought into the RSC season for the first time in nearly 20 years because the company's second home, Newcastle Playhouse, is currently being redeveloped.

Cooke feels that four, almost unknown, Spanish plays will attract the same strong interest in the North-East as they have at Stratford in the Swan Theatre.

He agrees with Michael Boyd that splitting the company into 40 actors performing just the tragedies and a further 23 working on the Spanish Golden Age season allows each production to develop and improve.

"These Spanish plays have been widely neglected in this country and we really don't know much about them. They are really exciting, with Lope de Vega (who created the opening play called The Dog In The Manger) writing something like 600 plays, but all these plays are about people being obsessed with each other," Cooke adds.

The appeal to the RSC is the lack of English emotion about de Vega's piece, being performed alongside Tamar's Revenge by Tirso de Molina, House Of Desires by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz - a Mexican nun who also wrote erotic verse - and Pedro The Great Pretender by Miguel Cervantes.

"The thrill and counter-thrill of doing new plays are really exciting," says Cooke.

The company has commissioned a new work called Midwinter from former writer in residence Zinnie Harris, which will run at Live Theatre along with Independent newspaper political commentator Yamin Alibhai-Brown's Nowhere To Belong, about playing Juliet in Uganda as the shockwaves of change struck her family.

The RSC is still being cautious about co-commissioning plays with Live but Cooke stresses that his company "loves the idea of creating work together". Meanwhile, strong ties are being formed with students from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities.

* There will be a bus service out to Heaton from Newcastle City Centre for the Spanish season and theatre spokesman Andrew De'ath says of the People's Theatre's 550-seater capacity: "We are hopefully going to see thousands of people come here who don't normally make that journey."

* Theatre Royal general manager Peter Sarah has joked about positioning trustees around the building with fire buckets because the theatre burnt to the ground in 1899 after a performance of "the Scottish play". "My predecessor fought his way into the office twice to finally rescue the night's takings. He threw them out of the window to a local lad, who caught them and promptly ran off into the night."