Weds: meet Mum at the New Piccadilly Cafe for lunch, then onto the Globe Theatre to see Love Labour’s Lost. The NPC is in its last couple of weeks, closing Sunday 23rd. It’ll be truly sad to see it go, with its decor and menu unchanged since the 1950s. Owner Lorenzo was on the BBC local news the other week. He tells of the time a group of bequiffed Greasers had a punch-up in the place during the cafe’s early days. ‘They must be in their seventies and eighties by now,’ Lorenzo says. ‘But if I see them again I’ll still ask them to pay for the windows.’
Must get a few new photos of myself in there before it’s too late.
From one out-of-time landmark to another: the Globe Theatre, on the South Bank. The word ‘replica’ always makes me think of that Steven Wright line that borders on the philosophical: ‘Came home today to find everything had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.’
One of the actors, William Mannering, has broken his foot, and there’s a announcement begging forgiveness for the necessity of ‘Elizabethan NHS’ crutches onstage. The crutches in question are covered in black fabric, and the actor uses them to great comic effect (and practical – scaring off a few pigeons that invade the stage). I think of that most famous use of black crutches in Shakespeare – Antony Sher’s Richard III.
Love Labour’s Lost is pretty fluffy and slim on story, but makes up for it with lots of wordplay, verbal duels and general parading about. The ending is curiously downbeat, and hints at the sequel that never was, Love’s Labour Won. Which was referred to in a recent Shakespearean episode of Doctor Who, filmed in the Globe.
On a first trip to the Globe, the venue itself is very much the star, with its painstaking period reconstruction, octagonal timber shape and ceiling ever open to the elements. Today there’s a good sized audience for a matinee, with the expected students, schoolchildren and American tourists in visible evidence. In fact, I have yet to pass by the outside of the Globe without hearing at least one American accent cutting through the South Bank’s hubbub like a siren. But then, the Globe itself was rebuilt at the instigation of Sam Wanamaker, the American actor. And I think Lucy M, now one of the editors of the RSC Complete Shakespeare, once told me that all the major Shakespeare conferences and seminars are in the US, rather than the UK.
Mum and I are having nothing of the standing-only area down the front, just as I’m not keen on being a Promenader at the Proms. I like to sit down, not just for the comfort but for the guarantee of a fixed, linear, and indeed sheltered space. We also hire a couple of £1 cushions for the wooden seats, which are well worth it.
The play only uses a bare minimum of props and backdrops, but there’s a couple of beautifully-realised puppet deer (for the hunting scenes), and some truly fantastic period costumes, with the women in huge gold and green dresses forming billowing pools of colour whenever they sit down. As well as the tousled and crutches-wielding Mr Mannering, there’s Trystan Gravelle as Berowne, with his dark, thick floppy hair and dark, thick Welsh accent, who scoffs his lines with speed yet relish, treating Shakespeare’s syllables as luxury chocolates. Katherine is played by the striking Oona Chaplin, half-Spanish granddaughter of Charlie, while Gemma Arterton’s Rosaline is pure porcelain haughtiness a la Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
The cast are clearly having fun, which for a venue like this and a Shakespearean comedy as wordy as this, is just what’s needed to rub off on those looking on. I think the Globe – like any open-air venue – probably suits comedy better than tragedy. The likes of Hamlet work better in closed spaces, rooms as dark boxes, with no distractions. Comedies are more flexible to the wandering eye.
I’d say A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the most obvious choice for the outdoor stage, with its magic and its visual set-pieces, but the lesser-known Comedy Of Errors would work well at the Globe too – a straight farce with funny plot twists that doesn’t really need latter-day visual gags to bump up the laughs. Turns out the Globe put it on last year, however, so it’s probably going to be a while before they do it again.
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Thought re the McCanns case, currently dominating newspapers with much the same treatment as a national emergency or state of war. By going with the theory that the culprit is the last person one suspects, I wonder if the Portuguese police are adoring fans of Agatha Christie.
