The Royal Shakespeare Company should not be swapping genders in productions and losing the rhythm of the text, according to a former director of the National Theatre.

Sir Richard Eyre told the Hay Festival that the Stratford-upon-Avon company had made a bad decision by “tampering with the beat and rhythm” of Timon of Athens. The recent production directed by Simon Godwin features Kathryn Hunter as Lady — rather than Lord — Timon.

Sir Richard, who has worked in theatre for five decades and ran the National Theatre for a decade until 1997, said that iambic pentameter was crucial to performing and understanding Shakespeare. When asked what he thought about the Timon production and its “tampering” with the beat so that a line such as