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Post by oxfordsimon on Sept 12, 2016 7:16:15 GMT
Agreed
2 hours 20 plus interval has always been the maximum for any of the versions I have directed.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2016 7:44:47 GMT
Running times exceeding 3 hours isn't exactly an exclusively Emma Rice thing though, they're half the reason I wasn't completely sad to see Dromgoole go. Someone should really tell the Globe - and the RSC - that 3+ hours should be considered more of a limit than a target.
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Post by Jan on Sept 12, 2016 7:48:35 GMT
Running times exceeding 3 hours isn't exactly an exclusively Emma Rice thing though, they're half the reason I wasn't completely sad to see Dromgoole go. Someone should really tell the Globe - and the RSC - that 3+ hours should be considered more of a limit than a target. True, but Dromgoole and the others never said this: "In a world where people are used to watching television and film, it would be “silly” to not to try and streamline some of the plays to keep them fresh, she says. “I think [the plays] do need to be shorter,” she concedes. “I’m going to be quite rigorous with myself and my directors to say come on, there’s clearly some more fat in this that can go. Let’s keep moving it on.”
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2016 8:16:59 GMT
Haha, touché! Still, Macbeth and Shrew both came in under 3 hours, so let's give Rice more than one production to prove she can do the same.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Sept 12, 2016 8:20:56 GMT
Given that a pretty full text Macbeth can be done in 2 hours, coming in under 3 is not really an achievement!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2016 8:26:14 GMT
Given the previous history of Globe productions, I'm willing to accept the baby-steps for now 'cos at least they're in the right direction!
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 12, 2016 9:26:00 GMT
The reason that oxfordsimon directs plays is that he has strong personal tastes and wants them done his way. Bravo for that! The same is true of Emma Rice. Her tastes clearly differ from those of oxfordsimon, and theatre would soon become very boring if every director had the same outlook. Only one of them is the artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, and it's not surprising that they choose to direct there their personal preferred way rather than in that of the other.
Seeing the show live in the theatre, I felt very comfortable with the acting and the amplification and the running time (on my feet in the yard) and with everything else! Judging from the warm responses all around, so did many many others of our audience.
I'm beginning to wonder if the repeated sniping is partly because some individuals who don't respond positively to Emma Rice and Kneehigh resent that everyone else around them is sharing such a deep warm human experience. It must be like going to a party when you haven't taken the same drugs as everyone else. There's no point in complaining - Just join in or go home!
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Post by caa on Sept 12, 2016 10:51:36 GMT
Sorry I need to say I really like Kneehigh productions but have to say I agree with Oxford Simon. As far as I'm concerned if you want to hear Shakespeare's words don't bother seeing a Shakespeare production directed by Emma Rice. Why she was made artistic director of the Globe is beyond me, but I guess they wanted someone who would shake things up! In my opinion it was a mistake putting her in charge but only time will tell. As for her Midsummer Nights Dream it has been a hit, but I wish she had trusted the text more.
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Post by David J on Sept 12, 2016 11:48:57 GMT
I agree that this is far from the perfect Shakespeare production. I too have problems with things like singing interrupting the text and particularly Puck shouting her lines a lot of the time.
At the same time this is one of the best Midsummer Night's Dream experiences I've seen. It's revived so many times and at this point I want to expect the unexpected from a Midsummer production. I want to be lost in this world of magic like the mortals.
This production did that for me and standing in the yard it was one of the best experiences I've had this year.
It will be interesting how much Emma Rice will test my preconceptions of a Shakespeare production in the next few years.
I just hope she doesn't mess around with the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The Globe has had enough time to establish itself as a venue of "historical importance". We've only had the Jacobean recreation for a few years and I've already seen some of the most imaginative shows in there using limited production values. Though how Emma Rice expects to get a lighting rig in there I do not know.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 12, 2016 11:55:59 GMT
Emma Rice has already directed The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk in the Sam Wanamaker. She's also directing The Little Matchgirl there in the Winter Season. I suppose someone will say it should have been adapted as The Candle Boy because matches weren't in common use, girls were played by boys, and everyone was little in the olden days.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2016 12:35:53 GMT
I think there's a middle ground to be reached between directors not trusting the text, and directors trusting the text too much. Some of the most deadly productions I've seen have adhered to the text absolutely slavishly, and a cheeky rewrite or adlib here or there never hurt anyone. And if I've said it once I've said it eight hundred times - I'd rather see a flawed yet entertaining production than a thoroughly respectable yet deeply dull one. Did Emma Rice take it too far with Dream? Maybe she did. Am I going to pass judgement off the back of her one Shakespeare production in her first year? Absolutely not. (Also, as far as I'm concerned, Rice's cheeky rewrites displayed a much better understanding of the original Shakespeare than Trevor Nunn's thoroughly turgid direction of King John did.)
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Post by Jan on Sept 12, 2016 13:01:34 GMT
I think there's a middle ground to be reached between directors not trusting the text, and directors trusting the text too much. Some of the most deadly productions I've seen have adhered to the text absolutely slavishly, and a cheeky rewrite or adlib here or there never hurt anyone. And if I've said it once I've said it eight hundred times - I'd rather see a flawed yet entertaining production than a thoroughly respectable yet deeply dull one. Did Emma Rice take it too far with Dream? Maybe she did. Am I going to pass judgement off the back of her one Shakespeare production in her first year? Absolutely not. (Also, as far as I'm concerned, Rice's cheeky rewrites displayed a much better understanding of the original Shakespeare than Trevor Nunn's thoroughly turgid direction of King John did.) You are not comparing like with like. Nunn's Dream illuminated certain aspects of the text much better than any other production of the play I've seen. Just a small example: why at the end of the play does Egeus suddenly give his approval to Hermia for her to marry Lysander having opposed it so strongly at the beginning ? Without adding any new text or gimmicks Nunn made it entire clear.
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Post by caa on Sept 12, 2016 13:09:53 GMT
Having seen Emma Rice direct Cymbeline for Kneehigh 10 years ago, and her production of Midsummer Nights Dream I think her approach to both plays was very similar.
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Post by Jan on Sept 12, 2016 13:18:55 GMT
Having seen Emma Rice direct Cymbeline for Kneehigh 10 years ago, and her production of Midsummer Nights Dream I think her approach to both plays was very similar. Not really, her production of Cymbeline didn't use ANY of the original Shakespeare text.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Sept 12, 2016 15:14:51 GMT
I have always taken a very fluid approach to my Shakespeare productions. My style has varied but I have always wanted to have very clear storytelling and a fidelity to the text without being slavish about it. I am not a purist in any way. My favourite three Shakespeare productions are the McKellan Richard III, the Vegas Merchant of Venice and Aberg's RSC King John (which I acknowledge was a divisive interpretation)
I have always cut the text and changed language to help understanding. I have always engaged in cross-casting as far as I could - without disturbing the structures of the play.
I am open to new ways of approaching Shakespeare. Having watched the stream of the Rice Dream, I felt it was in many ways very derivative and lacking in real originality. It was clearly a crowd-pleaser and there is much to be said for bringing in new audiences - but you have to show them Shakespeare if they return to see other productions in different styles and not to feel as if they don't belong there. I fear that people who are introduced to Shakespeare via the Rice Dream will struggle with a more 'traditional' approach.
The Globe has always taken risks - like the all-male and all-female ensembles, the three person Tempest, the work with OP productions. It shouldn't be a stale historical place - but you can take things too far in the opposite direction.
I don't think this Dream was too far. I think it was poorly cast and poorly executed. That is a far bigger problem. If you don't love and understand Shakespeare, your audiences won't either.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2016 15:29:44 GMT
I have to say that I've often found Shakespeare a bit of a bore at times, more often than not there's always some section or another where I drift off and zone out, sometimes have a snooze etc but I found the Rice AMND an absolute blast and thought the cast was glorious.
Give me this over something as frankly dull as the Benny Cummerbund 'Hamlet' or the Almeida's 'Richard 3' or as laughably awful as the Redgrave/Darth Vader 'Much Apoo About Nothing'.
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Post by peggs on Sept 12, 2016 17:14:14 GMT
I watched the streaming last night and had rather mixed views. It wasn't really my cup of tea, too much modern ad libs (though I had no issue with this in the Tempest inside at the start of the year so have to admit this might have just been my preference), I got a bit bored with the singing, the mechanicals were a tad irritating, there's only so many times that i want to hear 'working at the globe' shoe horned into lines and yes very long. Yeah not convinced by some of the acting or styles of acting though there were some strong performances in there. And the text did at times seem to suffer from all the running around and as someone on the last page noted a lot of the laughs were on modern additions, I guess you get away with that more on a comedy perhaps, I wasn't convinced that there were always necessary, that there wasn't a laugh to be had by playing to the text.
However I can easily believe that if your experience of Shakespeare has been dull teaching at school, incomprehension etc. that this production could revolutionise the way you view Shakespeare, it looked for the most part as so audience friendly, I like the Globe for its audience interaction and it had this in spades. It was fairly easy to follow, it seemed to remove any sort of distancing by playing it modern and i bet if you were there you really felt part of something and went bouncing out into the night. Yes i did wonder if that was your only experience how you'd cope with something more restrained in future but perhaps at least people would give Shakespeare another go after that experience.
As noted elsewhere until Rice has directed more productions we won't really be able to tell if this is going to be standard fare at the globe or not so i'll reserve judgement till then, i'm due there next month for the imogen re-imagining so will see how that goes as I don't think i've seen anything of Rice's before (i wonder now is she even directing that?) so don't have a lot to go on. I hope they'll be a bit of mix re productions as i'm fond of this theatre and it's so cheap if you're prepared/able to stand.
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Post by cirque on Sept 12, 2016 19:45:59 GMT
Of course this is a very valid opinion.i do think the Globe has to please many....a major audience who love the experience. The theatregoer ,the academic and the curious.Not easy.it has been a house of invention and experiment although perhaps regarded as more in the research tradition than theatre experiment.Emma Rice ...be not confused....is a vastly intelligent and creator of theatre.Her Kneehigh work has won acclaim across the world and,believe me,it is very demanding of its audiences.Quite revelatory in the case of Tristan and others. Her vision ,I feel sure,will bring a new and exciting dimension to the theatres and she is passionate about a sense of story which,of course,is the essence of the drama.
She does not direct Imogen this is Matthew Dunster who did a brilliant Faustus not long ago at this address.Lots of aerial work included.
Many of the comments surrounding Emma Rice were made at Brooks Dream......from anger to dismissal....it was not the revelation at first and took time to win the status it now has.The Globe has now,I feel,the potential to reach its most exciting phase yet but AD s take time to develop how their vision can work.Great last night to see and sense an atmosphere more akin to festival than theatre......you know,for some ,a night they will never ever forget.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 13, 2016 1:20:11 GMT
i'm due there next month for the imogen re-imagining so will see how that goes as I don't think i've seen anything of Rice's before (i wonder now is she even directing that?) It's Matthew Dunster, now Associate Director at Shakespeare's Globe where his previous productions include The Frontline, Troilus and Cressida, Doctor Faustus and The Lightning Child.
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Post by Jan on Sept 13, 2016 6:13:27 GMT
Of course this is a very valid opinion.i do think the Globe has to please many....a major audience who love the experience. The theatregoer ,the academic and the curious.Not easy.it has been a house of invention and experiment although perhaps regarded as more in the research tradition than theatre experiment.Emma Rice ...be not confused....is a vastly intelligent and creator of theatre.Her Kneehigh work has won acclaim across the world and,believe me,it is very demanding of its audiences.Quite revelatory in the case of Tristan and others. Her vision ,I feel sure,will bring a new and exciting dimension to the theatres and she is passionate about a sense of story which,of course,is the essence of the drama. She does not direct Imogen this is Matthew Dunster who did a brilliant Faustus not long ago at this address.Lots of aerial work included. Many of the comments surrounding Emma Rice were made at Brooks Dream......from anger to dismissal....it was not the revelation at first and took time to win the status it now has.The Globe has now,I feel,the potential to reach its most exciting phase yet but AD s take time to develop how their vision can work.Great last night to see and sense an atmosphere more akin to festival than theatre......you know,for some ,a night they will never ever forget. This is just a long-winded way of saying that if the audience don't like it that is their fault. Actually she is in no way "Very demanding of her audience" - that's the whole point, she is trying to make accessible productions for a new audience, the Globe has not recruited her on the basis she will make things difficult for the audience. Oh, and she plainly isn't "vastly intelligent" either. She's been successful mainly turning old films like Brief Encounter into stage works for a middle-class audience, putting her on a level with a genuine theatrical innovator like Peter Brook is just absurd.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 13, 2016 10:21:54 GMT
She is vastly emotionally intelligent and vastly theatrically intelligent.
Yes, clearly different from Peter Brook but one similarity is that they both investigate non-western performance traditions and then introduce aspects of them as fundamental elements of their individually distinctive work. And they've both given enormous significance to creating and nurturing theatre companies as communities.
EDIT: And they're both fascinated by, and share a love of, storytelling in theatre.
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Post by caa on Sept 13, 2016 11:55:52 GMT
Having seen Emma Rice direct Cymbeline for Kneehigh 10 years ago, and her production of Midsummer Nights Dream I think her approach to both plays was very similar. Not really, her production of Cymbeline didn't use ANY of the original Shakespeare text. Thank you for putting me right. As I recall it was part of the RSC complete works festival....
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Post by oxfordsimon on Sept 13, 2016 12:27:37 GMT
Not really, her production of Cymbeline didn't use ANY of the original Shakespeare text. Thank you for putting me right. As I recall it was part of the RSC complete works festival.... It was - and was greeted with a largely negative reaction. We have to remember that this Dream is the first Shakespeare play she has ever directed. I still don't understand how a recruitment process could have ended with the appointment of a candidate with no professional relationship with the author at the centre of the company. I really don't.
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Post by Jan on Sept 13, 2016 12:55:00 GMT
Thank you for putting me right. As I recall it was part of the RSC complete works festival.... It was - and was greeted with a largely negative reaction. We have to remember that this Dream is the first Shakespeare play she has ever directed. I still don't understand how a recruitment process could have ended with the appointment of a candidate with no professional relationship with the author at the centre of the company. I really don't. I suppose they want Shakespeare made accessible for a new (different) audience. What she's doing with Shakespeare is not new or innovative though - her approach reminds me of 1980s Cheek by Jowl and since then other companies have been far more radical than she is - for example Fliter's "Dream" which has been touring for years. As someone who hated the "authentic" productions staged to date at this venue I sort of welcome her appointment, except that it's blocking a younger director from getting the job (it's a perpetual problem for young directors when all major theatre companies are run by the middle-aged)
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 13, 2016 12:58:58 GMT
Clearly, she was the best of the applicants.
Certainly, she's an excellent choice to exploit the potential of the unique venue.
Tangentially, Dominic Dromgoole was known for new writing at the Bush before he came to Shakespeare's Globe.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Sept 13, 2016 13:12:01 GMT
Clearly she was the one who fitted what they were looking for - I just don't understand how that can mean appointing someone with no track record of working with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
Dromgoole did have Shakespeare as part of his CV prior to his appointment - and a life-long love of the Bard.
Rice has a great reputation - but it is still one with no connection to the core repertoire of the Globe. Kneehigh has a very loyal and vocal following and they have done some very interesting work.
Judging Rice on the basis of her Dream, she has done nothing with that production to allay my fears. As Jan has just said, nothing she did with it was original. Many other directors have used the same sorts of techniques over the years - to better effect.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 13, 2016 15:20:11 GMT
As Jan has just said, nothing she did with it was original. Final comment(s)- Why should direction at Shakespeare's Globe be "original"? Or "authentic"?
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Post by Jan on Sept 13, 2016 16:29:36 GMT
Clearly, she was the best of the applicants. Certainly, she's an excellent choice to exploit the potential of the unique venue. Tangentially, Dominic Dromgoole was known for new writing at the Bush before he came to Shakespeare's Globe. She was the best based on whatever criteria they used to choose. But we don't know what they were. My guess is they wanted to move on further in the area of new works which Drongoole started to include collaborative productions with Kneehigh and others. Who was on the committee that made the choice ?
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:14:24 GMT
With Rice’s ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ production, this is almost ‘too much of a good thing’, oddly enough. Rice’s intentions are wonderful, her innovations great. Rice’s regime will be very very good, and everything good about it was in here. So why would I merely give it three stars? That’s the problem: EVERYTHING was in here, including not just too many un-Globey ideas about how to stage Shakespeare, but every exciting mistake she’ll make. It’s good that Rice has her own identity and isn’t a Dromgoole carbon copy, it’s good that her regime is going to be more gender-balanced and inclusive and it’s good that she’s going to prioritise modernity, but good grief the anti-Bardolatory and the in-jokes and the blindingly unnecessary technology... In only her second Shakespeare but first of many to come, I think Rice wanted to show us everything she felt the Globe could be, should be and will be; rather than take ten years to make a point, she made it in three hours. The Globe under her looks set to be raucous, rollicking fun, irreverent, modern, appealing to new audiences, legitimately fun. Her Midsummer was. But this wasn’t a show as much as a show-off, and there’s the rub.
So much about this was so so lovely. Firstly, the great innovation of changing Helena to Helenus had nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with casting Ankur Bahl, who was really really lovely! With his lovely lovelorn longing and his sense of fun, he made Helenus a sympathetic but never self-pitying, stronger-than-usual lover. This production seemed mostly to care for those four lovers, with a down-to-earthness and normality to them I found quite charming, and real comic pizzazz in those four performances. Beyond that, plenty of nice touches – genuine debauchery within the fairies (though I found Puck too shouty), genuine care towards the mechanicals, genuinely unpredictable whimsy, stunning music which shows that Rice (like her predecessors) can subtly reference the play’s darker, more intellectual aspects in a way which doesn’t interfere with the fun (using Indian music and musicians, Rice is clearly answering anti-colonial scholars who critique the stealing of an Indian baby). And the inclusion of Beyonce and Bowie in this, of all buildings, was surprising and sweet, the kind of newness and modernity that was, too often, squandered by Globe traditions.
The issue was I can enjoy debauched fairies and Hoxton lovers and Globe ushers and new technology and colonial appropriation critique in isolation; thrown together in this very special theatre, it did not make a coherent show. A Dromgoole show (or a Luscombe or Dunster or Macintyre or Carroll or Rylance show there) tended to have a simplicity of purpose: primarily, make something current out of a clunky old circle. This had a complexity of intention, more about how any Shakespeare could be staged there, and less about how this Shakespeare should. Plus these lovely touches were one of too many ‘new’ aspects, alongside the neon, alongside weirdly insider and mean-spirited in-jokes... I actually think this exact show could have been wonderful, but the anti-Dromgoole anti-Rylance newness of it overwhelmed it. There was almost a meta-voice shouting over the top “WE CAN HAVE T-SHIRTS NOT CODPIECES, WE CAN HAVE SPOTLIGHTS NOT JUST THE SUN, WE CAN CALL IT HOXTON THE WORDS CAN BE REWRITTEN, WE CAN HAVE ADLIBS, WE CAN HAVE...” and that made the show a ‘statement’, not a ‘production’. I admire almost every single aspect of this show, because I can tell Rice’s irreverence is going to shake up the building in a good way, but ‘not the sum of its parts’ comes to mind – too many parts I love make for an inconsistent and un-unified sum I merely quite liked instead.
As for removing the USP of the Globe, I do and don’t agree. Would the Bard have staged a three man Tempest? In 1612, would troupes from Belarus and Israel and Hip Hop have performed these works? Would a play like Nell Gwynn have happened, and if so presumably with not Gugu Mbatha-Raw but Richard Burbage? And presumably Prospero would be played by someone most unlike Vanessa Redgrave? The Globe’s historical value was only ever one part of it from the beginning. Rylance wasn’t a traditionalist and nor was Dromgoole, so why should Rice be? I think it’s the nature of the changes, though: whatever else, the Globe had its limits, and ‘updating’ it would ruin the point. Neon... Particularly the theoretical aspects – gender switching, sexuality switching and tasteful technology – are wonderful, but giant neon and bogstandard modern costumes seem more like working against the space, rather than with it. If next year is filled with costumes and cod-pieces I’ll feel there’s been backtracking, but I hope next year isn’t quite so anti-Globe. Mostly, less neon.
What made Dromgoole great, incidentally, was that he used the limitations and the history of the Globe to be academically incisive. Last year his Measure For Measure stood contrary to Cheek by Jowl and Gibbons-Hill’s two grimy political reinterpretations, making the problem play unproblematic fun for the groundlings; rather than make it more shallow, however, he found the heart few had seen in it before, and found something truly romantic in that very weird romance. If his Measure for Measure could have flooded the Globe with sex toys, there’d have been no need for it to be at the Globe (might have made standing in the pit an awful lot more fun, mind, though this from the Oresteia kind of did the job); due to the Globe’s Jacobethan problems, it often ended up the most insightful modern Shakespearean stage in town. There is a risk that without the Globe’s problems you don’t have anything to solve, and that would be a shame.
And perversely, I think the all-encompassing modernisation may have worked against Rice. I wonder if there’d have been something even more revelatory, and even more progressive, about turning Helena into Helenus in the rigid society of the seventeenth century. And I also think that making the Mechanicals the Globe ushers would have still worked – and been funnier – had the rest of the show been staidly Shakespearean.
So when I say “Too much of a good thing”, my cup did nor o’erflow with joy during this, though I did laugh a lot. Simply, there were too many good prospects for the future, which made for a baggy three hour show. I think Rice took everything ‘good’ she wants to do with the building over the next ten years – stage Shakespeare as a modern, progressive, updated, flippant two-fingers to Bardolatry with no qualms about modernising the place – and overpacked her first show with her mission statement. I think her 2017 and 2018 shows will be more subtle, more old-fashioned and more Globe-y, whilst I hope her 2017 and 2018 shows will keep the adventure and fun and modernity of this. Her 2016 show, though, was buckling under the weight of proving many, many points about Shakespeare as modern (points most of us got over at least ten years ago), points about how Shakespeare can accommodate irreverence and rewriting (points the Globe could have taken years ago), points about how Shakespeare is going to be inclusive (points we all welcome). As such, it was a bit crazy, modern in weirdly unnecessary ways, and too much neon, but I welcome the changes and I welcome a wonderful new regime by Rice. We now know everything she intends the Globe to be, and (neon aside) it’s going to be modern and it’s going to be inclusive and it’s going to be wonderful. Her mission statement I agree with wholly. Her comedy I found hilarious. I just do hope her next production is actually, vaguely, somehow, slightly, Shakespearean.
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