Globe All Seasons

[Phantom of London]

And Henry VIII which should be one of Shakespeare’s greatest play and certainly the greatest history play, with stunning monologues well it isn’t.

[oxfordsimon]

Given how tough recent years have been for young actors who might normally be looked at for roles like Cordelia, it does feel just a tad selfish for MT to snaffle those roles for herself at a time when she has been (and continues to be) a salaried Artistic Director.

She is also, I would contend, too old for Cordelia.

And yes, the messing with H8 feels absolutely unnecessary. I don't see what we will gain from having Queen Henry

[Jan]

Jan 25, 2022 15:58:56 GMT oxfordsimon said:

Given how tough recent years have been for young actors who might normally be looked at for roles like Cordelia, it does feel just a tad selfish for MT to snaffle those roles for herself at a time when she has been (and continues to be) a salaried Artistic Director.

But Artistic Directors are usually directors and they direct something every season too (except if they're Trevor Nunn during the last several years of his RSC tenure). But she is an actor so she acts in something every season - and so can gives a chance to younger directors (which she has). I don't see an issue. Artistic Directors who do nothing at all apart from that job are rare - David Lan at the YV most years I suppose. 

[oxfordsimon]

I am not keen on ADs who direct either.

Your job is to run the organisation, to show artistic leadership

Running an individual production or starring in one takes you away from that.

Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right.

Norris at the NT would not be facing the storm he is right now if he had just run the company rather than writing and directing an ill conceived musical

The same can be said of the RSC leadership. I acknowledge that recent months have been personally very difficult for Doran. But before that his leadership was lacking but he still kept directing.

When you take over a company you should set aside acting or directing and focus on leading. You are only there for a short part of your career.

[Jan]

Jan 25, 2022 19:03:53 GMT oxfordsimon said:

I am not keen on ADs who direct either.

Your job is to run the organisation, to show artistic leadership

Running an individual production or starring in one takes you away from that.

Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right.

Norris at the NT would not be facing the storm he is right now if he had just run the company rather than writing and directing an ill conceived musical

The same can be said of the RSC leadership. I acknowledge that recent months have been personally very difficult for Doran. But before that his leadership was lacking but he still kept directing.

When you take over a company you should set aside acting or directing and focus on leading. You are only there for a short part of your career.

Can you think of a single AD other than David Lan who did it that way ? Without more examples it’s hard to know if it would work. We’ll see with Eric Whyman at RSC I suppose, she’s directed hardly anything all the years she’s been there.

[lynette]

Jan 21, 2022 20:35:27 GMT oxfordsimon said:

They are making it Shylock's play. Which is hardly radical or innovative.

There was a long tradition particularly in the 19th century IIRC of ending the play after the trial and ignoring Act 5 completely.

Shylock appears in a very small number of scenes and exits the play in Act 4. He isn't the dominant character in terms of lines or stage time. Yes he is a key player but the play as written is not the Shylock play. He certainly isn't the title character as some have always believed.

So I fear that this will be an attempt to force a contemporary agenda on the text.

I find it frustrating that so many contemporary directors don't trust the text to show you how to approach the play. If you don't trust it, don't direct it.

The ‘Merchant’ of Venice is almost a concept isn’t it? The play is all about commodifying human experience. Bassanio needs dosh to go get Portia who has been made an object of her father’s will and is to be ‘sold/awarded tho’ nice touch that the man she gets isn’t swayed by the dosh on offer, or is he? Portia has to give him a mighty big hint which casket to choose.  And so it goes on. Shylock bemoans the loss of a daughter and sets that against the loss of the ring which was given to him by his beloved wife, so circles of money and affection and which wins out? Antonio is I suppose, the actual physical merchant who gives money to keep friendship ( love?) but who ends up with nobody and the idea of the money being turned into flesh says it all… I’m not a huge fan of this play. We did it in school - I was 14- and I can remember the teacher telling us very firmly that Shakespeare was not antisemitic. I agree with that but it does take some energy to maintain that view unless the production is sensitive and unless you’ve see Marlowe’s Jew of Malta which is full on, go kill the Jews kind of stuff. The play does need a revamp, fresh eyes, so let’s hope this is it. 

[floorshow]

Saw Merchant yesterday, it's a bit of a mess but has moments.
The tone is all over the place and the text is truncated so there's a fair amount unresolved at the end.

If it's anyone's play in this form then it's probably Portia's, Sophie Melville definitely has the most fun and it's worth seeing just for her.
I still walked out scratching my head and wondering what the point was though.

[jay]

King Lear with Kathryn Hunter, directed by Helena Kaut-Howson. Mmmm. Saw King Lear with same actress, same director at The Young Vic in the mid 1990's . It was truly terrible. Woefully under-cast in places, inept staging, odd ideas ( Lear pushed around the stage in a bath-tub...), poorly spoken. Any yet - the reviews were, for the most part, glowing. The production was often referred to as 'Mid-European' ( whatever that means) in the reviews, which seemed a way of excusing ineptitude. Be interesting to see if the same actor/director team can make a success of it this time - and how lucky they are to have found a theatre willing to give them a second chance.

[peggs]

Well that rather fills me with dread jay

[oxfordsimon]

Hunter is theatrical marmite. You either adore or despise her acting. I have found very little middle ground.

Personally I find her too idiosyncratic to buy into her performances. Just too mannered for my tastes.

[juicy_but_terribly_drab]

She was the best part of the Tragedy of Macbeth film as the witches and in The Chairs right now but both those roles call for something uncanny which obviously is her schtick. I can see how it could work for Lear too, but obviously it's less of an immediate fit than characters literally called the Weird Sisters or a role in an absurdist tragic farce.

[Jan]

I saw her play Cleopatra. Not great.

[oxfordsimon]

Mar 7, 2022 20:31:41 GMT Jan said:

I saw her play Cleopatra. Not great.

It was a poor production in so many ways. But she was in no way convincing as Cleo. Not helped by the injured Tony

[samuelwhiskers]

Well Henry VIII is pretty puerile (gigantic gold inflatable penises, Henry VIII pulling his boxers down and sitting on a toilet onstage, and characters played by giant teddy bears) which would be fine but it seems to have little resemblance to the actual play.

Baffled by the writer’s insistence on shoehorning as many famous lines and speeches from other Shakespeare plays as possible, regardless of whether they fit the context or not, as some kind of Shakespeare Greatest Hits.


Henry VIII gets famous lines from Hamlet. When Anne Boleyn decides to marry Henry she’s given Benedick’s speech from Much Ado when he discovers Beatrice is in love with him and realises he loves her too. She also has some of Lady Macbeth’s most famous lines. When Katherine of Aragon talks about her stillborn child she’s given Constance’s famous grief speech from King John.

Honestly you cannot do this. Those characters are all completely different and in different circumstances. Constance’s grief speech expresses her rage and devastation after her 12 year old son is brutally murdered. That’s a completely different thing to having a stillbirth and Constance and Katherine have very different personalities. Much Ado is a romantic comedy about two people living a pretty frivolous life realising they’re in love with each other. Anne Boleyn is manipulated into a political marriage that ends up killing her.

Every time I recognised a famous line from a different play it took me completely out of this play.

[oxfordsimon]

Really sorry but not surprised to hear that.

As soon as they mentioned bringing in a new writer to improve the script, it was clear they didn't have confidence in their ability to make the original work.

It is fine to create a new bawdy pasticcio of a play to tell this particular story. But don't call it a production of Shakespeare's work.

It is time for this sort of thing to stay in student productions and not to infect our major institutions.

[Someone in a tree]

May 26, 2022 20:19:30 GMT samuelwhiskers said:

Well Henry VIII is pretty puerile (gigantic gold inflatable penises, Henry VIII pulling his boxers down and sitting on a toilet onstage, and characters played by giant teddy bears) which would be fine but it seems to have little resemblance to the actual play.

Baffled by the writer’s insistence on shoehorning as many famous lines and speeches from other Shakespeare plays as possible, regardless of whether they fit the context or not, as some kind of Shakespeare Greatest Hits.


Henry VIII gets famous lines from Hamlet. When Anne Boleyn decides to marry Henry she’s given Benedick’s speech from Much Ado when he discovers Beatrice is in love with him and realises he loves her too. She also has some of Lady Macbeth’s most famous lines. When Katherine of Aragon talks about her stillborn child she’s given Constance’s famous grief speech from King John.

Honestly you cannot do this. Those characters are all completely different and in different circumstances. Constance’s grief speech expresses her rage and devastation after her 12 year old son is brutally murdered. That’s a completely different thing to having a stillbirth and Constance and Katherine have very different personalities. Much Ado is a romantic comedy about two people living a pretty frivolous life realising they’re in love with each other. Anne Boleyn is manipulated into a political marriage that ends up killing her.

Every time I recognised a famous line from a different play it took me completely out of this play.

That's fascinating to read, Im slowly working my way through the canon. A few times during the performance I thought the odd line sounded familiar but as this was my first Henry V111 ...

I went in with a sense of trepidation as im finding  the histories dull. This was far from it. Loved the bright colours, like an old master with a new lease of life. Lots of cheering during the feminist speeches (and rightly so) and all in all a really good night  at the theatre especially with the forthcoming Jubilee.

[peggs]

Yet to see but from what I've heard it sounds like they should have just written a new play.

And I've been told it's been toned a bit in previews.

[cavocado]

This has got a wide mix of reviews, 5 stars in the Telegraph, 2 stars in the Guardian and others. I wasn't planning to see it but am interested in the same way I was for R&J last year, which also polarised reviewers.

[lynette]

Shame. The Globe is an ideal venue for this play with the opportunity for procession and the glorious last scenario, soooo NOW! Could also be nicely portable show to take to different venues in and outside etc etc. O well.

[Jan]

May 30, 2022 18:34:10 GMT lynette said:

Shame. The Globe is an ideal venue for this play with the opportunity for procession and the glorious last scenario, soooo NOW! Could also be nicely portable show to take to different venues in and outside etc etc. O well.

At least they did it. Doran simply omitted it from his “complete” cycle of plays that has just finished and it is one of the very few Shakespeare plays the NT has never done in its entire history. It has a large cast and no other company are likely to stage it. So, we’ll have to wait 15+ years for the next Globe production.

[bordeaux]

Just seen the Globe's touring Julius Caesar, probably the most amateurish production I've seen in over 30 years of theatre-going (I saw it outdoors at Hay). One or two of the actors just about inhabit their roles, but several are not up to it - it feels like a school play. There are only six actors so they all play multiple roles, each one with a different regional or ethnic accent. At the end of the play Brutus' death just involves him walking off the stage - and none of the post-death speeches happened. But one couldn't be sure if this was some unexplained directorial choice or if something had gone wrong.... And then the production ended with a pointless dance to gee the audience up and get them clapping... which always seems like cheating to me.

[peggs]

It's the oddest ending isn't it. I saw it a couple of weeks ago and was told by people I was with who'd already seen it that the ending had people so baffled that people in the know were having to start the clapping as no one could tell if it had finished or not. No one I know has managed to come up with a reason for cutting the end as it is. I thought it weak, the leads didn't sell it for me which is a bit of a problem and there is so much doubly up it's rather confusing. For me the highlight was Caesar's death and the capacity of the fake blood to shoot out over the front five rows.

[Phantom of London]

I adore Shakespeare, but Henry VIII is flat out obscure, no great monologues from the play, it is no Henry V or Richard III. Doesn’t the musical Six do it a lot better?

Now think I need to go to confession, Henry wouldn’t approve.

[bordeaux]

May 31, 2022 21:11:25 GMT Phantom of London said:

I adore Shakespeare, but Henry VIII is flat out obscure, no great monologues from the play, it is no Henry V or Richard III. Doesn’t the musical Six do it a lot better?

Now think I need to go to confession, Henry wouldn’t approve.

But it can be made into an interesting evening, if only for aficionados.  I remember the very good Greg Doran production in the mid-90s with Paul Jesson and Jane Lapotaire.

[cavocado]

www.shakespearesglobe.com/seasons/winter/

Henry V, Titus Andronius, Winter's Tale, Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights. I will probably see a couple of these, but disappointing that there are no plays by Shakespeare contemporaries.