We thought it good you hear a play (Shakespeare' s Globe Theatre in general)

Member Name: Athanasius Green

Product:	Shakespeare' s Globe Theatre in general
Date:	12/08/00 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superbly built, fantastically evocative, improves its vicinity

Disadvantages: Productions generally excellent, but not uniformly good, vulnerable to the weather, hard seats!

When Sam Wannamaker's proposal to rebuild the Globe close to its original site was first mooted, I was dismissive of the idea. I thought that it would just be another ride in "England-Land", that commercial construction of a fantasy England, and a siren call intensifying that dread English desire to avoid the present by living in the past.

What is more, I always thought that reconstructing Shakespeare in this way would have been an indication of a desire to pickle him - and you can only embalm the dead.

When I saw a broadcast from the Globe after it had opened, I began to revise my opinion. When I actually went there, I blessed the memory of Sam Wannamaker.

I can only describe my first two visits to the Globe as tinglingly thrilling. It may be an illusion, but the staging was such that I actually believed that Shakespeare was substantially more accessible than I had credited.

The productions I saw were high energy. The fact that you can get a very large audience in very close proximity to the stage means that you get both the intimacy and the spectacle. And they strive hard to give an insight into the original staging without being slavishly over-authentic.

The text takes on extraordinary depth in its original setting (though by no means all of Shakespeare's plays were written with the Globe in mind) - a male actor playing a Cleopatra lamenting that one day a thousand years hence a piping boy would be representing her on the stage.

I love Stratford and the RSC, but a bit of me thought that they are going to have to look to their laurels. The Globe palpably reminds one of the fact that, really, truly, Shakespeare belongs to London and not to Stratford.

Mark Rylance - the artistic director, leading man, or whatever they call him - is hugely talented but it would appear that, in the spirit of authenticity, the Globe companies have eschewed the conventional director as an early music ensem
ble might eschew a baton conductor. The result of this is that Rylance lacks a restraining hand. He would be even better if someone could rein him in a bit.

It was nice to have a seat on the ground floor (but, oh boy, hire a cushion, or bring your own, those benches are HARD) - this gives you the choice to go walkabout amongst the groundlings.

The Globe highlights the fact that stage and dramatic convention is very deceptive. All kinds of things that a former generation would have regarded as very avant-garde are normative for the Shakespearean stage - staging "in the round" (or near enough), contemporary cum contemporaneous costume, reflexive remarks about staging (which we might think of as Brechtian), the minimum of scenery.

If you would like to like Shakespeare, go! If you love Shakespeare and aren't stuffy about him, go!

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