Christopher Wren's House

While down at The Globe recently I noticed for the first time this house nearby. A plaque reveals that this was the house where Christopher Wren resided when involved in the building of St Paul's Cathedral on the opposite bank of The Thames (most conveniently reached these days by means of the Millennium Bridge). Apparently it was in this same house that Catherine of Aragon first lodged when she arrived in England in order to marry the son of Henry VII, Arthur.

Measure for Measure

Saw Measure for Measure at the Globe this week. Perfect weather for it. I believe this is the only Shakespeare title that makes an allusion to a Bible verse (see Matthew 7:1). I think it is this play that I wrote an essay on once disagreeing with the statement that there is a silvery undertone of sadness in the play (I can only think I did that as it is easier to argue against something rather than for it - I find anyway). In that it ends well this is a comedy but there is plenty of tragedy and some fine speeches. The play explores a number of issues very well. This production began by trying to give us the feel of a decadent Vienna, preparing the way for Angelo's deputyship. It was all done very well. Lucio (Brendan O'Hea) enjoyed his dream comedy part and Isabella (Mariah Gale) got so into her part she was able to cry real tears at the right moments.

Richard II at the Globe

I was glad to get down to see Richard II at the Globe last week, especially as I'd ended up missing the other history offering this year - King John. I had particularly enjoyed the Ben Whishaw BBC version on TV a few years ago and so had high hopes of what, on the face of it, is a difficult and uninspiring play with few great quotes (This sceptre Isle is the only one I spotted). The lead this time was taken by Charles Edwards (who I recognised from Downton Abbey) and he made a fine stab at it. The others were all okay too but I felt it didn't really grip us quite somehow. Ah well. The music was provided by a set of shiny trombones. That was done very well.

Cheap at the Pryce

I availed myself of the opportunity of seeing The Merchant of Venice down at The Globe on Tuesday (still only a fiver in the yard). It stars Jonathan Pryce and his daughter Phoebe as Shylock and his daughter Jessica. Their surname gives just one tiny extra layer to a play full of interesting ideas about property and wealth and cost. I was not really familiar with the play and so it was good to see, especially in this well executed performance. Though a tragedy (I assume) there was plenty of comedy and all done very well, especially by Stefan Agdebola as Lancelot. The programme notes explain that this is really two stories (that of the Jew Shylock and that of Portia) sewn together. It's not that well done really but Shakespeare is able to give the audience what they want and get away with some quite amazing stunts in the mean time. As ever there are famous phrases (The devil can cite scripture for his purpose; all that glisters is not gold) and speeches and it is good to hear them in their proper context. I did not know that Shylock's question "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" is followed by "if you tickle us, do we not laugh?". The speech beginning "The quality of mercy is not strain'd,: It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" really is quite something.

As You Like It

I went down to The Globe this afternoon to see As you like it. As ever, it was very well done. AYLI is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, probably because I first studied it in school. A number of words I first encountered in that context I believe. The seven ages of man and the varying speeds of time speeches are rightly famous and it was good to have them in context again plus "laid on with a trowel", "sweet are the uses of adversity", "forever and a day", etc. The tap dancing was okay for a play that is part way a musical (al that side being done very well) but I don't see the point of introducing modern items (an OS map, sunglasses, a thermos flask, a bicycle, etc) when such efforts have been made to get back to Shakespeare's own times. The parts are shared out fairly equally and no-one shone. Perhaps they could have got more humour out of it. I fear some material was cut.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Globe

Got down to the Globe for the second time this season and stood watching Julius Caesar with the other groundlings (always less of them by the second half I notice). This was the first of Shakespeare's plays put on at the old Globe (I think that is why we had a bit of jiggery pokery with the scenery at the beginning and during the play). As it says in the programme somewhere the piece does lack a comic character (or were the actors just not good enough with the comic material available) to lighten the mood but brimful of famous lines and phrases (The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,  But in ourselves, that we are underlings; Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; Et tu, Brute?; The live-long day, Beware the ides of March, let slip the dogs of war, etc). George Irving of TV fame took the part of Caesar well, though it isn't that much of a part - Brutus, Cassius and Mark Anthony getting the best bits. Perhaps one problem with the play is that it is hard to identify with any of these three, though they are well drawn and relatively complex. Anyway, good stuff from the Bard as ever.

Titus Andronicus

Got myself down to The Globe yesterday to see Titus Andronicus. I was (as my parents would have put it) "up in the gods" this time and glad of a seat. At least three people fainted in the heat. It's an early play and not in the top half of a list of Shakespeare greats. It's not Hamlet or Lear, although you can see him groping his way there. It is a pretty gruesome affair and it is no surprise to know that it was very popular in the 1590s. If someone told me they'd seen what's in the play I'd be pretty intrigued I would think. Let's just say a lot of people die and most of them on stage. The play appears to have some humorous elements. This production certainly did and they were most welcome. It is difficult to see how such a pleasant sunny afternoon could have been so pleasant without them.

Macbeth at the Globe

Grabbed what was almost the last chance to see Macbeth at The Globe. This was a bog standard Globe production (excellent leads, less sure minor parts) but the play is so powerful in and of itself it didn't need much help. It's the play I know best and for much of it I was mouthing along with the actors. My one lacunae is the important scene between Malcolm and MacDuff before the final denouement. The play and its scenes are endlessly interesting and having read the programme beforehand I picked up on the bird references and the exploration of a marriage that the play includes. Shakespeare's skills with words and in presenting characters with real depth is phenomenal. I felt like I knew Macbeth better than ever. There seemed to be a lot of German young people among the groundlings, some were a little chatty but not so as to spoil the evening. What I was more ambivalent about was the crowd's eagerness to laugh. The porter scene is the only funny one in it although some lines were delivered to comic effect. Probably just me. I noticed that the funniest line in the play (when MacDuff's son says Mother he has killed me) was quietly dropped. So great stuff again at the Globe.

Henry VI Part 2 at the Globe

Henry VI Part 2 has got to be one of the more obscure of Shakespeare's plays but I was free last night and that is what was on at the Globe so down I went. I chose another restricted view at first but it was worse than restricted so I went back and got a cheapy for the courtyard and coped with standing okay. This was a no frills production and with few laughs, which is fair enough. Perhaps this is where you see the bard's skill at its best. It's just a bunch of people talking in the end but what a picture he paints. The history is probably unreliable but the picture of humanity is pretty undeniable. Even an obscure play has well known lines ("The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" "Adam was a gardener" (Act IV, Scene II) "Small things make base men proud" (Act IV, Scene I) So a well acted though unremarkable piece. All three are on at the moment but I am unlikely to see them all. This is chronologically the first so a good start. Only moan was the disproportion either side of the interval, the latter part being much shorter than the former.

London Culture 02

After the Courtauld I got myself south of the river to Shakespeare's Globe for the first time this summer. The play was sold out but I thought I'd try the returns queue and had a choice of three tickets. I opted for the first time to sit down. They said the view was restricted because it was next to a camera filming the performance - but it was a front row fine view (I was glad to be under cover though there was very little rain).

Midsummer Night's Dream must be the first Shakespeare I ever encountered around 14, though I don't recall seeing it performed at all. It is quite hard to follow in some ways as the Titania Oberon elements assume a number of things. You can't help liking Bottom and the mechanics though, especially when played as well as they were by Pearce Quigley and co. Fergal McElherron was a ringer for Bobby Ball at times. The scene with the wall at the end was milked for every legitimate laugh and was genuinely funny. Every time I get to the Globe I enjoy it and I'm just sorry that (mainly with my art classes) I've not been until now this season. More here.

As You Like It

I got myself down to The Globe again last Tuesday to see a performance of As You Like It. I know the play well as I did it for A level, I recall. This was a bit different to other productions I have seen at The Globe in that it was a cut price production with only eight players. This involved doubling up the parts. At one point near the end a dummy stand in was necessary but they got a laugh out of it. Turning Touchstone into a woman didn't really work for me and there were other things that I missed from the bigger productions. Sometimes I thought the voices of some of the generally younger cast were a little weak and the whole thing got off to a rather chaotic and shaky start. Why they were all dressed in 19th century dress I do not know. Neither that nor the use of a camera really added to things. On the whole it was pretty good I guess but I have come to expect a very high standard I see. The music was done well by the cast themselves.

Richard III at the Globe

Down at the Globe again this week to see Richard III. With an all male cast and the most basic staging, the play relied very much on the actors, especially Mark Rylance in the lead who played the part rather unconventionally as an undoubtedly evil man but one who first let us into his confidence and then bumbled his way through countless atrocious acts in an almost disarming way. The play mentions conscience several times and that is one of the keys to Richard. He always seems to answer his conscience somehow. His final reference to it is "conscience is but a word that cowards use". It was nice to see some actors I recognised from TV (Samuel Barnett and Roger Lloyd Pack). I'm sure I saw Julian Sands in the crowd at one point.  

Taming of the shrew

In the hectic week that was the last week I somehow managed to get down to the Globe again to stand in glorious sunshine watching Taming of the Shrew, which tells of the subjugation of a high spirited and feisty young woman by a rather odd man called Petruchio. I remember seeing a TV version of this with John Cleese once and enjoying it. This production was very much played for laughs with lots of good jokes and hi jinks, though the decision that Petruchio should be virtually naked for a while was not appreciated or necessary. Typically of Shakespeare it is a play that is fun to watch but when you ask what it is about it is difficult to be sure exactly. What point is being made here? It's beyond me.

Footnotes include meeting one of my son's best friends and whom I know from church there on a school trip (they are studying it next year) and a short chat with a Dutch girl from Utrecht as I lunched outside the theatre before going in. A neuro-scientist hoping to do doctoral research next year she had to admit that she had never read the Bible. (She had also never heard of Jan Akkerman and Thijs Van Leer, which I could forgive, but Abraham Kuyper?!!). There must be many such young people in Europe. Ian Hamilton said on Monday that he has met many students in Cambridge who (outside their own narrow field) have never read a book. 

Henry V at the Globe

For some reason I haven't found time to say what an excellent time I had down at Shakespeare's Globe last Thursday (apart from the hayfever set off by the thatched roof). They were doing Henry V, not a play I'm very familiar with although some of the lines are inevitably in one's head (O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!; Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more Or close the wall up with our English dead! ). A play almost devoid of theatrical bombast its brilliantly paced variety (soliloquy, comedy, action, etc) still stands up and this was a good if not a great production. The play inevitably raises questions of war and peace though I found the interest in language much more interesting. There is an amusing scene (mostly in French) where the French Princess learns some English from her maid. The play also features a Welshman Fluellen and that was very well done (with a few adlibs such as esgob Dafydd and Aberystwyth [why is that word so funny?] though the many look yous seem to be original). I'd love to hear Rob Brydon doing the part. Of course, archetypal Englishman as he may be, Henry V was technically Welsh (born in the same county as yours truly - Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. .. I'll tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth) and that is alluded to. Henry says to Fluellen "I am Welsh, you know, good countryman". Of course, Shakespeare just loves irony and there is plenty where that came from in the play. The whole Globe project really grabs me (especially the idea of letting groundlings in for a fiver). Apart from the occasional plane passing over you might think you were back in the 17th century at times.

Marlowe's Faustus at the Globe

I popped down to the Globe yesterday afternoon to see Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. It was a lovely afternoon and the production was done very well. It is the play that includes the famous lines "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships (not shops)?" I was sorry that my favourite line was cut, where Faustus says at the end

"See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.

One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!"

They did have a bit I'd forgotten, however, where Faustus asks Mephistopheles who made the world and he won't say because it is, of course, God. They made quite thing of that and it was powerful for me.

I remember reading it in university and enjoying it. It's quite different from Shakespeare in that it employs a lot of stage spectacle. This production did all that very well (there was some limited audience interaction and bawdiness almost inevitably). It must have had quite an impact on the original audiences. Its genius is that it is a real spectacle and good fun but raises the most profound theological questions. Whether we take the play on its own professed terms, those of theological orthodoxy, or look deeper it still raises crucial questions of life and its purpose. Like the last play I saw we ended with the whole cast doing a little dance with the musicians. I really wonder what that is all about.

Anne Boleyn at the Globe

We are back in London now and last night we had a real treat courtesy of my father-in-law, passing through en route to the USA. An avid reader of reviews, he had noticed that Howard Brenton's drama Anne Boleyn was playing at the Globe Theatre. He was only able to get tickets for the four of us (we and our wives) to stand and with an atrociously rainy day we were fearful of a soaking. As it turned out, there was hardly a drop. We really had two things for the price of one then - a positive experience of seeing a play in the interestingly reconstructed Globe as groundlings (something I've not done before although we have gone to the Globe itself more than once) and a very well acted and thought provoking play too.

Current day groundlings are thankfully much, much quieter than Shakespearean ones I guess but we got a real idea of what it might have been like to stand under an open sky and see a play in Shakespeare's time.

The play itself was of great interest to us featuring not only as it did Ann Boleyn and Henry VIII, etc, but also James I commissioning the AV and William Tyndale in unlikely but plausible scenes with Ann (the play takes place in two time periods - that of Boleyn and that of the early years of James I). Boleyn (Like Henry adn James) is an endlessly fascinating figure and although there was much speculation here the play cast an interesting light on her undoubted Protestantism and on Tyndale and the effect of the Bible on the English nation too. There were sadly some crudities that marred the beauty of the piece but many could enjoy it. For reviews see here.

Frost Fair

We braved the cold air to visit the Frost Fair on the South Bank around the Tate Modern and The Globe last Saturday and had a very good time. Way back Londoners used to hold markets on the iced over Thames but with various changes that hasn't happened since 1841. This river bank version is a modern equivalent promoted by Southwark Borough Council. For more see here. For the history see here. The only sad note was not to see the gospel being promoted by anyone. There must be a way in.

Holidays

The holidays are pretty much under way for us by now. Today (a day of glorious sunshine) it was a three way split. The middle boys are away at the CCIW camp with their cousin and other church children in Tywyn, West Wales. See more here.

Eleri and the two youngest headed off to Legoland in Windsor, where they had a fine time, although the Viking thing is not finished yet. More on Legoland here.

As for Rhodri and I, we headed down to St Paul's and then across the millennium bridge to Shakespeare's Globe. (See here). We listened to an interesting and informative guide talking about how it was in the days of the bard and then had a look around at the small exhibition there. We must go and see something some time. Groundlings can get in for a fiver. (One tiny quibble, they often speak about the way the Puritans got rid of drama but downplay the fact they were against bull baiting, etc, too. I'm sure the Puritans could be presented in a way more palatable to people today with a little sympathy).

After a pizza lunch we headed back over the river stopping off at Cheapo Cheapo Records in Soho where we picked up a few bargains (Feeder, Elvis C, Moby, Ocean Colour Scene and Tommy Emmanuel CDs) see here before catching a Number 13 home.