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Post by partytentdown on Apr 30, 2016 23:11:45 GMT
Has anyone been yet? Curious to hear early reports from the new Emma Rice leadership.
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Post by DuchessConstance on May 1, 2016 7:51:49 GMT
Was going to the dress rehearsal but felt ill and had to leave, unfortunately. It certainly looks good.
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Post by bulletproof on May 4, 2016 15:45:39 GMT
Also curious - there's a couple of angry rants on the Globe's page for the play along the lines of "what has Rice done?!", about it not being Shakespeare, and references to "odd" sexualised content and costumes. Some highlights;
"It is so far removed from Shakespeare and it beggars belief that Rice can do this in a key year for Shakespeare"
"Why change the name and sex of characters and selling it as if it was the Shakespeare's play?"
"As a theatre passionate it is terrible to see what they have created by using the name of Shakespeare. It is a shame to see what the Globe has become."
Not sure whether any of this is informed criticism or just bigoted sounding off about the unexpected, but either way it sounds good to me! |
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2016 16:27:38 GMT
Shakespeare seems to attract a certain type of nutter.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2016 9:36:03 GMT
I've gotta say, the more outrage I hear, the more excited I am about this. I'm a huge devotee of the Globe, in spite of the obvious issues (does the floor have to be so painfully solid? Do the stewards have to be so cliquey and rude? Is there no way to prevent queue-jumping by those who should know better?), but I have sometimes felt it's a shame that the Shakespeare productions at least largely seem to fit into the same mold. It's a glorious space, and it does it a disservice to not give people the room to be more creative within it. I've been hoping that Rice would shake things up and do something exciting that would disgruntle the snobby elitist regular attendees who seem to think that the way things have always been done is set in stone and inalienable and mustn't ever be messed with. There's a small but believe me all-too-recognisable number of regular visitors who in their keenness to establish themselves as The Core Audience do nothing but make themselves a nuisance to the staff and make the theatre feel unwelcoming to people who are newer to the scene, and my firmest wish for this season is to see some of these visitors realise that change *is* going to happen, they have *no* influence over it, and maybe they'd be happier patronising another theatre, leaving the Globe for EVERYONE ELSE who is happy to go along and see what new creativity and madness is happening this time. So it looks like the season is off to a good start for me!  |
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2016 9:45:45 GMT
Yes, the above posts tipped me finally over the edge last night to get me a ticket for the Yard. I was always curious and interested because of Emma (Kneehigh) Rice and Ankur (DV8) Bahl, and intrigued by Meow Meow, but was too jaded by Shakespeare to attend. However, the provocative whingers have provoked me to go and I'm now really looking forward to it.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2016 9:58:17 GMT
The feedback I've seen on twitter has been very positive - only seems to be a few people whinging on the Globe website.
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Post by David J on May 5, 2016 11:18:04 GMT
does the floor have to be so painfully solid? Well I'm in no hurry to see the earth's core, so... Anyway I am going to approach this debut season with an open mind. If there's anything I've taken away from 10 years of attending the RSC, is that I always want to see Shakespeare done in fascinating (and indeed strange) ways. Just as long as it works within the context of the plays. You can't just hammer them into a shape that suits your vision (I'm looking at you Wooster Group) |
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Post by David J on May 5, 2016 13:57:20 GMT
Some production photos have been released on Facebook
Now I'm REALLLY keen to see this!
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Post by argon on May 5, 2016 16:45:57 GMT
Just saw the matinee today yes you can say it is very left field and abundant with diversity but I do feel that Emma Rice was slightly steered down this route for her inaugural globe tenure to distance this from D Dromgoole excellent rendition a few years ago which was more to the traditional standing. This production may prove to be a marmite production, putting ageism aside I feel and certainly from this afternoons audience a younger crowd will take to this more which to some part is the brief of making the Bard more accessible. All on stage are mic'd up so the dialogue can be scrutinised even more than usual. After seeing the cast announcement for this a had reservations about Meow Meow but after seeing the production I think in most parts it worked out well and also for the Helena switch so I would give this an above neutral review.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2016 18:26:34 GMT
does the floor have to be so painfully solid? Well I'm in no hurry to see the earth's core, so... Haha! Well, I'm just saying, if they ever run a fundraising drive to buy a galvanised rubber surface to cover that hard concrete yard floor, I'll be first in line to chuck 'em a few bob.  |
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Post by peggs on May 5, 2016 19:42:41 GMT
Well it certainly looks interesting from the photos, most magical set if nothing else, I'm really hoping this is a good season even if i have to adjust my ideas a bit of what i expect there, i've had so many great days out there.
So argon Helena has become Helenus? It's play male? I'm curious.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2016 21:07:07 GMT
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Post by peggs on May 5, 2016 21:32:32 GMT
Interesting indeed though I must be half asleep as got to the end and was trying work out how the lovers would work when they get all mixed up and then read the last paragraph and went 'ohhhh'. Interesting take that and a good interview, I can't claim to be young and fit (just poor and addicted to being near the front) but that's probably the best article I've read on her planned direction, everything else just kept saying she was going to do lots of new radical stuff and then named things that already happen and kept harping on that she didn't like Shakespeare. I've booked a couple of things but will watch people's views now, I could easily be tempted there more this summer. |
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Post by Steve on May 5, 2016 22:42:14 GMT
So Helena has become Helenus? It's play male? I'm curious. Yes, it's excellent, Ankur Bahl plays Helenus and it really really works. He gives the best performance in the whole show actually, I liked everything about him. You could hear people's taboos being challenged when both men rejected a woman to chase after another man. One person near me gasped "NO!" lol But Midsummer is a party play, a big conflagration of play and discovery that disappears into the ether as a dream, and this interpretation is a Carnival, so gender-swapping makes perfect sense. This is a play Ryan should book 50 times, cos it features young hot men in tight pants singing serenading rock songs lol. |
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Post by Steve on May 5, 2016 23:50:38 GMT
A hybrid of CBeebies, Porn and a Psychedelic Rock gig, this playful production of Shakespeare is pure Carnival, and I loved it! Welcome, Emma Rice!!! Some spoilers follow. . . I agree this is going to be divisive. To a degree, there is so much going on that it's hard to hear Shakespeare's verse sometimes, partly because there is a wall to wall music soundtrack, and partly because so much is happening visually, that it's hard to concentrate. The music is the music of sex: rhythmic bass, either bass guitar or double bass, accompanying a centrally situated Sitar, which played together makes for an atmosphere redolent of the sexual abandon of the psychedelic Sixties. Think of the opening strumming of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black," backed up by the bassline from Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," but without Mick Jagger's droning to turn it into a downer. About the theatre, the party atmosphere is bolstered by large white balloons, which politely suggest female fertility, resembling enormous eggs, and lengthy plastic floating flutes suggest male phalluses. Periodically, the players appear to share and light spliffs, but without the show that Sheridan Smith made of doing the same in Michael Grandage's "Midsummer Night's Dream." Here it's just part of the wallpaper, it's a party after all. That Grandage Dream got it's frolic from David Walliam's mugging as Bottom, but in this show, everybody's mugging. This show's Bottom, the only male in the Pyramus acting troupe, often carries and plays a banjolele and mimics the squeaky high-pitched speaking voice of George Formby. Ewan Wardrop as Bottom is a scream! The Mechanicals in this show come on dressed like Globe workers, wearing t-shirts that say "Globe Team." I was suckered, like almost everyone else, into believing they were working the show, but when one of them came to clean one of the large round banquet tables, placed among us Groundlings, she did such a terrible job that I twigged she must be an actor lol. That's a clever trick, because it introduces the theme of transformation and carnival that hangs over the whole show. If Globe workers can be actors, and men can be women, and women can be men, and sitars can bring Indian sounds into the bastion of Shakespeare's Britishness, then anyone can be anything. It's liberating. Some will hate the exaggerated emotive acting style that is adopted by some of the players in this show. There is a distinct air of CBeebies about the Mechanicals talking to us, the children, with a Globe Worker, who turns out to be Bottom, warning us to allow actors to leave first in the event of a fire. The 4 lovers are even more childish than the Mechanicals, pouting and whining like teenagers. While some players come off as Children's entertainers, others such as Meow Meow (who plays Titania and Hippolyta), come off as raunchy adult entertainers in a Cabaret club. And our ertswhile children's entertainers are apt to change constume and join Meow Meow as fecund forest-dwelling crotch-grabbing singing sprites. Bottom sings, Titania sings, the lovers sing (in tight pants), even Zubin Varla, as Oberon and Theseus, the most traditionally adept verse speaker is apt to burst into song. The sitar and pounding bass accompany them, though a dashing Edmund Derrington, as Lysander, singing with soft seductive tunefulness, plays his own guitar as he woos Hermia into a frenzy for the first time. The gender swapping of Helenus and Puck both work wonders to spark this whole smorgasbord of craziness into full Carnival mode. Ankur Bahl's Helenus has all the sassy camp moves of a Lady Gaga backing dancer, though it's Beyonce's "Put a ring on it" that he sings and dances and preens with Anjana Vasan's geeky glasses-wearing Hermia. At some point, you just know those Clark Kent glasses will be discarded, as carnival infects Hermia's soul. Katy Owen's Puck is a marvel, impish, dressed like an elf, with devil's horns, but springing and placing her slight stature in front of every single groundling she can get her hands on, making full provocative prolonged playful eye contact with all of them. In one crazy moment, she fed a groundling a banana and snogged him. From child's play to raunchy sex, in the batting of an eye. I was afraid, and backed away from the tables in the pit every time she came near lol. Fittingly, among all the gender-swapping, David Bowie's "Space Oddity" gets an outing, a reminder of Bowie's pioneering gender bending. After Emma Rice conducts the Carnival of music and sex and gender-swapping and interactivity to a climax, it feels like the show's over, but then she boldly stages a very full prolonged production of "Pyramus and Thisbe" by the Mechanicals. It is as if the Mechanicals all attended Cornley Polytechnic, as this is undoubtedly a production of "Pyramis and Thisbe Goes Wrong," a reasserting of utter silliness that dispels the sex and trangression into the ether, before itself receding before Shakespeare's verse. This is a crazy musical night out. If Dromgoole staged Shakespeare in a fun way, Rice stages fun in a Shakespearean way. Some of the Shakespeare is lost in the morass, but it's impossible to care, when you've half forgotten who you are. 4 and a half stars |
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Post by talkstageytome on May 6, 2016 10:23:16 GMT
Agreed, a very engaging review Steve!  I'm so looking forward to this. I can't believe that in all my years as a theatre fan I've never seen a show at the globe before. By the sound of it, this one should be a fantastic introduction! |
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Post by scotty8692 on May 6, 2016 11:01:36 GMT
Fantastic review Steve! Seems an interesting production. I was planning to make Macbeth my first play at the Globe, but I might try this instead.
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Post by rumbledoll on May 6, 2016 11:35:42 GMT
Tremendous review, Steve! As always keep it up! The pictures alone got a couple of my friends (hard-core Globe fans) super nervous claiming Emma should not stray away from this theatre's own "landmark" look which sort of stuck as classical one over Rylance's & Dromgoole's tenures. Hope they won't be disappointed too much... |
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Post by peggs on May 6, 2016 21:35:39 GMT
4 stars in the telegraph, it questioned the speakers but mostly it seemed as they weren't necessary but gave big thumbs up generally all round and said the school groups were captivated, with a bit of luck this will overturn some people's views that Shakespeare is old and dry and dull, it clearly won't be for everyone and I'm banking on some productions being played more traditional with regards to the space and lighting and sound but looks like a very strong start for Emma Rice.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2016 9:08:39 GMT
I think what would be helpful is if we look at this production in relation to Everyman at the National. As the first show directed by the new artistic director, it's as much a statement of intent as a production in its own right, and if it seems flashy and over-the-top and like too much has been thrown at the stage at once, we should just bear in mind that now we're coming through the dodgy early days of Norris's tenure, we're about to go through a period of some very solid-looking revivals with some great names attached (and some new stuff, some of which will probably be good), so Everyman was really more of a "HELLO I'M HERE" than a "THIS IS HOW EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FROM NOW ON". I don't expect Rice to settle down and start doing Dromgoole-alike productions, but I wouldn't be surprised if her productions are a bit less "ROCK THE GROUND" from hereon out. And obviously with Rice not directing everything it would be foolish to write off this entire first season on the grounds that (the hypothetical) you are just too staid for artificial lighting, gratuitous sitar music, and a gay relationship, as I've seen some furious bigots on the internet decide to do.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2016 9:22:48 GMT
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk features just two actors and two musicians, so Emma Rice's Samamaker "HELLO I'M HERE" just next month should be a bit different!
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2016 21:26:43 GMT
I caught this at 2:00 this afternoon, and I thought it was just superb! It's definitely one of my favourite things I've ever seen on stage. It being my first visit to the Globe too, made the event even more spectacular. The atmosphere was amazing. I loved the twist of turning Helena into Helenus, and it worked very seemlessly. The characterisation of Puck, too was spot on and the vocal talents of all cast members superb.
The best £5 I've ever spent.
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Post by lynette on May 7, 2016 21:34:41 GMT
Great review Steve. Makes me wish I had booked just to see what it is all about. But then the balloons...hmmm
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Post by Steve on May 7, 2016 22:34:45 GMT
Great review Steve. Makes me wish I had booked just to see what it is all about. But then the balloons...hmmm Go on Lynette, give it a go. It's playing for months. |
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