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Shakespeare's Globe 2008 Season Totus Mundus   Introduction Dominic Dromgoole's third season as Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe is called 'Totus Mundus'.  Dromgoole explains that 'Totus mundus agit histrionem' (roughly 'The whole world is a playhouse') is thought to have been the motto of the first Globe.  This year's productions 'celebrate the glorious unruly diversity' of the playwright's work. The season's productions are:- King Lear A Midsummer Night's Dream The Merry Wives of Windsor The Front Line by Ché Walker Timon of Athens Liberty by Glyn Maxwell King Lear The Globe's twelfth season opens with Dominic Dromgoole's own production of King Lear.  I didn't enjoy the 2001 production with Julian Glover, but this year David Calder plays the unwise king outstandingly.  Calder has been a 'stalwart' of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National for years, but I never felt that he would be able to convince in this most difficult role.  He won me over very quickly though. I wasn't moved by the final scene, but I saw the play very early in the run and it was nearly there.  Not everyone in the cast is good, but a few stood out including Danny Lee Wynter's sad Fool, Kellie Bright's Regan and playing Kent another 'stalwart' of TV, film and stage for as long as I can remember, Paul Copley. Claire van Kampen's music is played on instruments of Shakespeare's period, but ballad singer Pamela Hay sings hauntingly in Old English.  Beautiful.  I was not the only puzzled playgoer before the play when the balladeer walked up to a woman near to me and spoke to her, it seemed to me, quite sharply for a minute or so in what turned out to be Old English.  After her encounter the victim looked at her partner and shrugged her shoulders. What was that about? The production has received deservedly good reviews in the press, and Calder gets special praise. It opened on 23rd April and runs until 16th August.   A Midsummer Night's Dream When I last saw this play at the Globe I was at first disappointed that the actor playing Bottom was ill, but Mark Rylance announced that he would be the understudy that afternoon and it became a unique opportunity to see a superlative actor have fun creating a role 'on the hoof' (pun intended). This year's production boasts Siobhan Redmond as Titania, Tom Mannion as Oberon, and is directed by Jonathan Munby. I've enjoyed Siobhan Redmond's performances on TV for twenty years (I can't believe it's that long!). As in many productions of the Dream, Duke Theseus and Oberon King of the Fairies are played by the same actor (Mannion) as are their respective partners Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons and the Fairy Queen Titania (Redmond). The human couple are distinguished from their fairy counterparts by costume and by accent. Everyone appearing in the Athenean court is dressed in black matching the black painted frons scenae (back wall of the stage) and stage pillars. The two 'Royals' speak formally in a 'posh' English accent. When we leave the court for the woods four fairies dressed as rag dolls dance and sing and plant bright red flowers in the bright blue floor that covers the stage and curved ramps that extend into the yard. A blue diaphanous sheet drops over the whole frons scenae. In this setting Oberon and Titania wear richly coloured costumes and both speak in Redmond's native Scottish accent. The young lovers start the play in the court dressed in black and are still in black when they appear in the forest, but at different times they each lose items of black outer clothing to show brighter attire beneath. I suspect that this is supposed to indicate stages at which they lose layers of sophistication in the wild forest setting. The lovers are suitably loud and frenetic, and the young ladies, Pippa Nixon as Hermia and Laura Rogers as Helena were anything but ladylike as they fought. Excuse a Geek moment here, but I'm fascinated by the two boys who originally played these and other leading female parts for Shakespeare. Here as in other plays the characters tease each other about the superior height of one and the darkness of the other. The Globe must have had two outstanding boy players with those characteristics and the audience would enjoy the joke running between productions. The rude mechanicals are also very entertaining. Paul Hunter as Bottom with added ears of wispy hair and extended teeth looks and speaks uncannily like comedian Ken Dodd (of the upright hair and long teeth). Unusual for a scene change to stop the show, but when the fairies removed the flowers from the stage and dragged down the diaphanous blue backdrop for the final scenes back in the Duke's court, they dragged it onto the stage and across the heads of the groundlings and out of an audience exit, there was a round of applause. But this production is an unusually jolly experience.  There were few inaudible speeches and it was altogether a hilarious summer afternoon's entertainment, which is just what a Globe comedy is about. A Midsummer Night's Dream opened on 10th May and closes 4th October.   The Merry Wives of Windsor The first Shakespeare's Globe production of his only comedy set in England is directed by Christopher Luscombe and designed by Janet Bird, the team responsible for The Comedy of Errors in 2006. The production runs from 8th June to 5th October.   The Front Line A new play written by Ché Walker is set in contemporary London inhabited by lost old men, unemployed actors, vegans and a reformed Christian, it is described as 'vibrant and blackly comic'. It runs from 6th July to 17th August.   Timon of Athens Here's a play that I have never seen on stage having its premiere at the Globe.  The team of Lucy Bailey, director and William Dudley, designer who brought us Titus Andronicus in 2006 return to the Globe and you can see their production between 26th July and 3rd October.   Liberty The final production of the season is a new play by Glyn Maxwell set in Revolutionary France in 1793.  It is an adaptation in colloquial verse of Anatole France's 1912 novel Les Dieux ont Soif. The production by Guy Retallack runs from 31st August to 4th October.   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 Edward 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 and Reviews of productions in previous years at Shakespeare's Globe.       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 18th May 2008