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New Globe Playhouse 2000 Season Introduction The fourth season of plays at this splendid reconstruction of Shakespeare's own theatre, built on London's Bankside featured Mark Rylance in the greatest tragedy, and a Prospero played by one of our greatest actresses, Vanessa Redgrave! The productions were:- The Tempest Hamlet Two Noble Kinsmen The Antipodes by Richard Brome The Tempest                                         ... I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ´twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war - to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove´s stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar; graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ´em forth By my so potent art. ... a tremendous clap of thunder rocks the Globe, and the tempest-tossed audience breaks into applause. By Act V of The Tempest on the afternoon of May 18th, the groundlings in the yard have been rained and hailed upon, dried in bright sunlight, drowned again, and chilled by the unseasonable wind. When Prospero tells us that he (she?) is responsible for our discomfort and is supported by the audible evidence of the elements, then who are we to disagree? We do know that this Prospero´s magical performance has been largely responsible for our delight over the past couple of hours. In last year's production of Antony and Cleopatra the director of Shakespeare's Globe, Mark Rylance played the Queen. In this season's first production Vanessa Redgrave plays Prospero in The Tempest. The ´Master of Play´ is Lenka Udovicki, who was born in Belgrade, and the music by Nigel Osborne is heavily influenced by Balkan folk music. The play opened with sailors fixing ropes about the stage, unaware of a small figure in white who had entered from the yard carefully bearing a small paper boat. Suddenly the spirit Ariel (Geraldine Alexander) dipped the boat that she (he?) carried, and the sailors were thrown violently forward, hanging on to the ropes. As she continued to ´play´ with the toy, white face almost expressionless except for a slightly curious frown, they were thrown in all directions. It was a very effective start. Broad comedy usually works well on the Globe´s stage, and this production was no exception. The comic trio of Caliban (Jasper Britton), Stephano (Steffan Rhodri) and Trinculo (Paul Chahidi) interacted with we groundlings to full effect. When Caliban bit the head off a raw fish, there were gasps of disgust from the audience, repeated seconds later when he spat it into the yard. Actually licking Stephano´s boots had a similar reaction. Paul Chahidi´s Trinculo was a tubby bespectacled clown of great charm. Redgrave was the calm centre to the confusion about her. I expected a big performance, but an actor of her calibre doesn´t need to bellow to command respect. Her speech style was conversational, with a slight regional accent, but beautifully aware of the verse. Miranda was played by Kananu Kirimi, who has never professionally acted on the stage before, and Prospero´s love for his daughter was evident throughout. Vanessa Redgrave is one of the greatest actresses of our time. I can´t tell you what she has that the others on stage didn´t have; all I know is that standing in the yard five feet below her, staring into her face, I believed she was Prospero. As the play drew to a close, and the heavens opened yet again (not the canopy over the stage, but the sky!), I was entranced yet again by Shakespeare´s rough magic, and wished for it not to end. When it did end though, I was glad to meet Gaynor in the newly opened Tate Modern gallery next door to the Globe, and go to the nearest pub, not for a beer, but for a hot coffee!   Hamlet This is the fourth season of plays at Shakespeare's Globe, and we have waited patiently for its artistic director Mark Rylance to tackle one of the great tragedies on this stage. At last he portrays the greatest of them all, the melancholy Dane himself. New evidence from Dr Andrew Gurr suggests that Shakespeare's Hamlet first appeared on the stage of the original Globe in 1600. On the afternoon of Thursday 1st June I felt that I was experiencing something like a playgoer exactly 400 years ago might have felt. He would not have seen it so often as I have, nor have recognised a famous quotation in every other line, but I did my best to get into his boots, and it was a rewarding experience. The start of the play is heralded by a fanfare from trombones distributed around the upper galleries, emphasizing the threat of impending war in the background throughout this play, and the consequent suspicion and spying that thrives in that atmosphere. The opening scene on the battlements of Elsinore Castle must literally set the night-time scene because there can be no lighting effects here. It is two in the afternoon on a summers day, and I'm sure that the little girl standing next to me understood that the pale-faced man in black armour was supposed to be a ghost. Shakespeare knew what he was doing! More fanfares announced the arrival of the Danish court, dressed in Elizabethan costumes. They are a very jocular lot, except of course for Hamlet in ´inky´ doublet and hose. For the past three seasons, Rylance's company has cast young men to play women, trying to be faithful to the conditions of Shakespeare's time. This has been interesting, culminating in his own very successful performance as Cleopatra last year. I think it was wise to abandon the experiment this season. Joanna McCallum is a very attractive Gertrude. I was never sure how Ophelia felt about Hamlet. In her early scenes Penny Layden seemed to portray her as a silly girl who merely enjoyed having a prince chasing her, but her later reactions and ultimate madness suggest that she cared much more than that. Tim Woodward was a hail-fellow-well-met Claudius, and Geoffrey Beevers an ideal Horatio, quiet and modest, but strong and dependable. But what about Hamlet? I saw Mark Rylance play the part in the Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Barbican ten years ago. He was young and eccentric then, wearing pyjamas throughout. Now he is older, and the pyjamas have been replaced by a nightshirt; well for the scenes where he is feigning madness anyway. Under the nightshirt is a garment very like a nappy (diaper), the rear of which he wags at Polonius on several occasions. ´An antic disposition´ is an accurate description; lying on the table kicking his heels in the air for instance. His brutal treatment of Ophelia is shocking; he assumes a leering country accent when he talks of ´country matters´. It is an exciting performance from the start. I stood in the yard as a groundling leaning on the stage. The newly installed foot-high rail around the stage is not a successful innovation. Two stools placed on each side of the stage front, and used on a number of occasions by members of the cast were also not very helpful to us groundlings. I missed a large part of the final swordfight because of Gertrude´s skirt. I´m not usually pleased to see Gertrude die! But apart from this, and the shouting style of some of the actors, I would have been happy to stand for much longer than the three and a half hours of this production. I really did feel that Shakespeare had written the piece for this theatre. When Hamlet described this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire he lay on his back and stared up at the stage canopy which fitted the description. Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius. By th' mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. Hamlet. Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius. It is back'd like a weasel. Hamlet. Or like a whale. Polonius. Very like a whale. Hamlet was pointing at the actual sky this time, and I like many others followed his finger to judge the cloud shapes ourselves. The white clouds were scudding below a blue sky and from second to second could have been described as any of those creatures. The first time that the term ´groundling´ was used was in Hamlet. At the point in the play when Hamlet disparaged these excellent citizens, Rylance came to the edge of the stage and spoke directly to us, to be greeted with boos from the yard, and applause from the toffs in the seats. However we were not in Shakespeare's London, but at the start of the 21st century. Mobile phones are a seemingly inescable curse in today's theatres, but at the Globe passing helicopters are worse. During a bout of Hamlet's 'ravings', Rylance strode down to front stage, and still in character, added an extra rave against one such intruder. As I said here three years ago, this is a living theatre, not a museum, and I look forward to every opportunity to visit the Globe.   Two Noble Kinsmen Another milestone for me, in that I have never seen this play performed. It was printed for the first time in 1634 as the work of Shakespeare and John Fletcher. A tragicomedy based upon Chaucer's Knight's Tale.   The Antipodes This comedy was written in 1638 by Richard Brome (pronounced Broom) who had been Ben Jonson's manservant. His other best known works are The Joviall Crew and The Sparagus Garden. The Antipodes is described (today) as a "screwball" comedy about a young man Peregrine Joyless who has been obsessed from childhood with a book called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight. This book was actually published in the mid-14th century and fantastically reported the strange people and creatures in far off lands: giants, woolly hens, the Gravelly Sea without a drop of water. It had been republished in 1625, and audiences of Brome's time would have been familiar with it. The doctor in the play, Hughball, who is more like a modern psychiatrist, assures the lad's father that he can cure him by convincing him that he has travelled to the Antipodes. Having drugged him, he carries him to the house of a lord, Letoy, who has his private troupe of actors convince Peregrine that he is in the Antipodes where everything is the opposite of the London of the time of King Charles I. The players present a world of honest lawyers, poetic beggars, duelling women and aged schoolboys. Peregrine is so horrified by this world that he grabs a stage prop sword and king's costume from the tiring house and proclaims himself monarch. This unexpected turn of events, as well as sub-plots involving Peregrine's father who is mad with jealousy, unable to believe in the fidelity of his young wife, and Peregrine's marriage which is still unconsummated after three years, are finally resolved in an entertaining manner. Many members of the White Company which earlier in the season presented Hamlet, seem happier with this material. Even Mark Rylance, artistic director of Shakespeare's globe, and a memorable Hamlet, enjoys himself here as one of the players, and a bit part actor. He first appears before the play to remove the board from the stage that requests playgoers not to take photographs during the performance, and he also warns the audience that the stewards have orders to remove members of the audience using mobile cell phones, and to throw them in the Thames! An over-complicated play, already slimmed down apparently, but interesting and great fun at times.   Links Internal       Original Globe   The story of how the original Globe came to be built   The building - a plan and what the Globe may have looked like   The excavation - what was discovered in 1989   The Rose - The Globe's great rival playhouse, its star Ned Alleyn and owner Philip Henslowe       New Globe   The story of how the new Shakespeare's Globe came to be built on London's Bankside in the 1990's.         Mike's Views, Reviews and Previews  of Shakespeare's Globe seasons from 1997 to the latest       Globe Main   Globe Playhouse top page       Recommended Books   My list of recommended books about the Globe, Rose and other playhouses of the time may be found in the Globe Playhouse section of the Well Furlong Book Shop. If you so wish, you may go on to buy many of the volumes in our Book Shop directly from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.       Home|Gaynor|Mike|Art|Theatre|Book Shop Updated 2nd January 2001