All Manner of Excitement from Shakespeare's Globe

Shakespeare's Globe is one of my favourite places in London.

If you asked me why, I'd say there are lots of reasons. My interest in Shakespeare started pretty early: I can clearly remember being asked to read Sir Toby Belch's lines from Twelfth Night in class aged about 11 or 12, and, just like Latin and languages (at the time!), I was fascinated by the pull between the familiarity and strangeness of the words... Also, the sweet feeling of release when you were allowed to talk out loud in class...

Then, my Mum and I became regular visitors to Stratford-upon-Avon; as tourists, as something to do with your youngest kid when the others were off having fun; as people for whom anything recognisably historic, particularly Tudor, was going to be of interest...

When I played Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream aged 14, learning the lines felt quite easy; it was the same when we were asked to study Othello for A Level. I was quite happy noodling away reading A C Bradley's thoughts on the Moor (totally unnecessary for passing A Level) while my French grades slipped: the result was 100% in the "Shakespeare and the Drama" module, which really stood for "she's read more than she should."

Mum and I made a cardboard model of the Globe Theatre (the one in London, that didn't exist at the time; this theatre, to my mind, was from ancient history) when I was still a young teenager. It wasn't easy either; it was fiddly, awkward and took what felt like a very long time to complete. The sense of accomplishment (combined with the smell of the glue) when we were finally finished was amazing.

Later, the idea that they'd built this complicated not-at-all circular when you're constructing it from card structure for real, in London, blew me away. My parents sent me a postcard of the new Globe when they first visited, while I was studying in Liverpool. It was around the same time as Shakespeare in Love came out on video, and probably around the year I took a module called "Stage to Page to Stage" about how to actually put Shakespeare's words on stage. Joseph Fiennes plus a relatively sexy tutor meant my lifelong fascination was complete.

When I was a language teacher, I took one of my more proficient students to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe, having explained the love potions and silly plot to her beforehand; it was great, and she loved it too. Since I started reviewing for londonist, they've been kind enough to offer me review tickets many times, and I've always enjoyed the experience, if not every play.

It's just a classy place: the staff, the programmes, the posters, the standing for a fiver, the shop, pretty much everything about The Globe pleases me. Just seeing a picture of it, looking so pristinely black and white, so pleasingly built-for-purpose, so alien to the modern blocks around it, will make me smile.

Recently, I've been engrossed by this blog by Tara Hale about her designs for the new season's programmes.

And then there's two these two bits of exciting news from the Globe in just one day. First, that the Globe team are as suitably ambitious about celebrating multiculturalism in 2012 as we are with our World in London blog:

Twenty-eight plays. Twenty-eight languages. The simplicity of it is lovely. The incredible amounts of work involved; terrifying. I can't imagine how hard it must be having, say, four different acting companies using one theatre, its rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, props cupboards. Making it run smoothly with 28 just seems gobsmacking. Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole described the festival as "terrifically clear and simple and slightly bananas". Got to agree with him there.

And secondly, that they're expanding. From 2013, the Globe's season will no longer run from around Shakespeare's birthday (23 April) to around mine (10 October). They'll be doing shows indoors as well.

I'm so chuffed with this news. Below are some of the pictures of what this new theatre will look like.

Exterior of the indoor Jacobean theatre at Shakespeare's Globe. Photo by Nick Robins

Model box interior of the proposed indoor Jacobea theatre. Created by Jonathan Fensom, photo by Fiona Moorhead

There'll be 320-seats, with two tiers of gallery seating and a pit area. From this model, it looks like it'll be as "challenging" on the arse as the current theatre.

Plans for an indoor Jacobean theatre, by kind permission of the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College Oxford

The theatre is based on these designs, above, from Worcester College, Oxford for a 17th-century indoor theatre. These plans are believed to be by Renaissance architect Inigo Jones or his protégé John Webb (I think more people might adhere to the latter theory?) and depict a venue similar to the Blackfriars theatre where Shakespeare and his contemporaries would've put on plays. They're the earliest plans for an English theatre in existence. (Wow.)

So, we'll be able to see plays like The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles and Cymbeline in a theatre super-similar to the ones they were written for, from as early as winter 2013. I can only imagine good things will come of the Globe's company having more space and more time to fill.

Arts Ahead 7 to 13 September from londonist

I don't quite know what to think about Shoes at Sadler's Wells.

It sounded completely brilliant in its initial blurb, and then I saw a video of the show with various people singing and it rather put me off. Still, the pictures are fab, and that's why its my top pick this week. I'm looking forward to reading reviews of it tomorrow...

In the rest of this week's cultural occurences, the most exciting thing is that I'm going to see Deathtrap tomorrow with the lovely Groff-fancier, ET. I'm really looking forward to it. And desperately trying to avoid reading any reviews of it before I see it. (Damn those "second press night" tickets.)

I've also made a rare decision to turn down tickets to Bedlam at The Globe for Thursday. Sometimes there's just too much going on, and not enough vitamins in one's bloodstream. I can't help thinking that the combination of last weekend's wedding, next weekend's Go Apeing and a damp night out at the Globe in between might just scupper any "staying healthy for September" plans I might've had. I'm slightly gutted, as it means it kills any Full House ideas I had to see everything the Globe offers in one season, AND there's the small issue of it being the first play by A WOMAN ("That woman is.. a WOMAN!" etc - Shakespeare in Love) at the Globe, but sometimes your health has to come first.

Read the rest of what's coming up this week on my londonist Arts Ahead column

Every Good Boy Deserves to See This Show

Or, In Praise of: Tom Stoppard

Last week, as JC was away, I headed to the National Theatre to spend a tenner on just over an hour's world-class (TM VL) entertainment.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was amazing. It'll be one of those shows that I forget I've seen, and then remember again with a whoosh of emotion (like Three Days of Rain); one that I perhaps enjoy the more I think about it afterwards rather than while I'm in the theatre itself; one that'll certainly stay with me for a long time.

You can read my review of the show here on londonist. 

I was already a big fan of Tom Stoppard. (He wrote my favouritest film, Shakespeare in Love, afterall.) As usual, I know I'm not the one who's just noticed he's amazing. But all the same, I totally love this piece about him in The Telegraph, where he's described wonderfully, as "as brooding and handsome as ever."  He's called "cerebral and autodidactic but not, he protests, academic even though his plays are studied in universities." It's a fantastically well-written piece by Nigel Farndale.

Here are a few tasty quotes:

"Few contemporary playwrights have a style so distinctive that their surname enters the language as an adjective. There’s Pinteresque and Stoppardian and, well, that’s about it. Stoppardian seems to mean dealing with philosophical concepts in a witty, ironic and linguistically complex way, usually with multiple timelines and visual humour."

Sir Tom's favourite plays?:

"I wouldn't deny you an answer, but I don't have favourites. I would say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia and the one I am writing now, which I haven't started."

I like that quote. It reminds me of SiL:

Marlowe: I thought your play was for Burbage.
Sexy Joe Fiennes: This is a different one.
Marlowe: A different one you haven't written?

And, back to that Telegraph piece, this wonderful discussion about the nature of intelligent, intellectual entertainment: 

Sir Tom reckons you can "miss the laugh" in two polar ways. "You can miss it by giving the audience too much information, so they have no work to do, or you can miss it by not giving them enough.

"This applies to every line, so it is not a generality about how oblique, or opaque, or transparent the play ought to be. It is a moment-to-moment decision you are making when you are writing the play, rehearsing it and acting it. The perfect play is when the audience has to reach to pick it up."

What a perfectly delicious turn of phrase. It actually makes my mouth water. Yum.