STAGE

Add the director of London’s Royal Shakespeare Company to the list of world figures concerned about the falling dollar. The financially troubled company is feeling the pinch of a weaker American dollar and could face a fresh crisis as U.S. theatergoers stay away, Terry Hands warned this week. If things don’t stabilize, he foresees a slump similar to one last summer that brought a record $2.2 million deficit in 1986-’87. “Americans are simply not going to come over,” Hands said, noting that 24% of the RSC’s audiences were foreign with Americans accounting for 17.5%. Last year’s financial crisis forced the RSC to consider closing one of its two major centers--at London’s Barbican complex and at Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon--but it was rescued by an emergency $2 million private grant spread over three years.