Ahh - the arrival of the 2014 schedule for Shakespeare’s Globe. This must signal that it is *almost* the start of the South London summer.
Stick with me, friends, Transpontine types and countrymen…
Attending outdoor performances at the Wooden O has become part of the established South London season. It’s a self-invented season that also includes getting pissed in the Peter May, but hey! - South London summers are THE BEST.
For seventeen summers I have been attempting to objectively select which performances to buy tickets for. Shows are circled with a big black crayon, highlighting what will DING my DONG.
But there comes a tipping point when you just say SOD IT - buy tickets for EVERYTHING, with the same voracity that some folk purchase porn.
Happy to be addicted to Hey Nonny Nonny.
Groundling tickets at The Globe remain the BEST value show in town. A grubby fiver - the same price as it was some seventeen summers ago - gives you access to renaissance costumes, getting wet and full frontal nudity.
At least it did for the ‘ambitious’ staging of Gabrielle last summer. I was still GRINNING come the concluding dance and a jig, despite being pissed on from up above, and almost having my eye taken out on the front row by a very proud male member.
ATTENTION!
The beauty of the cheapo tickets is that you have no shame in simply walking out mid-production, should the authentic actors bore the Jacobean breaches off you.
This has only happened to me only once during a particularly painful post-modern production of Macbeth. Give me tights and a codpiece over a black turtleneck jumper any day, Comrades.
And so what can we expect for the 2014 season?
“Arms and the Man”
…explains the schedule.
“Mankind’s endless capacity for Conflict.”
I don’t think we’re talking about South East London anarcho types, either.
Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus and Comedy of Errors [conflict, eh?] all get the Globe ‘renaissance costumes and staging treatment.’ Which is something I rather like. This isn’t tatty Shakespeare West End twaddle for the tourists. Authenticity if far more preferable compared to the post-modern bollocks.
The Last Days of Troy - a new play by Simon Armitage [Ooooh] - Holy Warriors, Pitcairn and Doctor Scroggy’s War are the new works woven into the schedule. The latter keeps the conflict theory [aha!] relevant, addressing the Great War in the year of its 100th anniversary.
It’s worth taking a gamble on the new Globe productions if yer man Will reminds you too much of O Level English Lit. There are some true gems supporting the main schedule. The Golden Ass from 2002 remains my personal Globe highlight.
To celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday (sorta…) this summer, The Globe has set the challenge of performing Hamlet in all 205 countries that exist around the… globe.
The FOOLS!
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Clickety click for tickets, blah blah blah.