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Time Out says
First-class theatre in a lovingly recreated Elizabethan setting
Built in 1599 and destroyed by fire in 1613, the original Globe Theatre was at the heart of London’s seedy South London entertainment district in William Shakespeare’s time. Here, productions were put on by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who included in their company old Bill himself.
Fast forward to 1997, when, following a decades-long campaign run by the late American actor Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare's famous wooden 'O' was recreated near its original site, using timber, thatch, and immaculately researched Elizabethan detail. You can get to grips with this theatre's history at its daytime tours, but there's a lot to be said for experiencing it in action. The venue's popular 'groundling' tickets invite punters to stand in front of the stage for under a tenner, or there's an option to get a more comfy view of the action from galleried bench seating. This outdoor space is closed in winter. But more recently, Shakespeare'sGlobe added the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – a candlelit indoor theatre within the Globe’s building, which presents plays in a traditional Jacobean setting.
Artistically, there’s a commitment to theBard, but within that it’s one of London’s liveliest and occasionally most controversial theatres.
Founding artistic director Mark Rylance led from the front: one of the world’s great actors, he still returns now and again. Just don’t ask him about whether he thought Shakespeare wrote all his own plays.
Dominic Dromgoole, the longest serving artistic director, had a reputation for being somewhat combatitive, but ushered in something of a golden age for the theatre, and oversaw the completion of the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse that allowed programming to go year round.
Emma Rice brought two scintillatingly good seasons of work to the Globe before she was forced out by the theatre's board, who were annoyed at her propensity for using amplified light and sound in productions. They wanted to restrict her; she walked.
The current artistic director is Michelle Terry. An actor-manager in the Rylance mould, she has focussed her efforts on diversity and actor-friendliness, and has already had her first hit with new feminist play 'Emilia', a story of Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' which landed a West End transfer.
Written by Time Out editors
Details
- Address:
- 21
- New Globe Walk
- Bankside
- London
- SE1 9DT
- Contact:
- View Website
- 020 7902 1400
- Transport:
- Tube: Blackfriars/Mansion House/London Bridge
- Price:
- Exhibition and tour from £25, under 18s from £18
- Opening hours:
- Globe Exhibition and Tour daily 10am–4pm. Closed Dec 24 and 25. (Check in advance for dates when the tour is not available.)
- Do you own this business?
What’s on
- Shakespeare
The Globe’s 2024 season proper kicks off with one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, as the theatre's in-house director Sean Holmes helms ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. Ekow Quartey and Amalia Vitale star as tempestuous lovers Beatrice and Benedick in an Elizabethan dress production of the play that we’re promised will turn the Globe into a ‘luxurious paradise’.
- Shakespeare
‘Richard III’ is a commonly staged play: the Globe last did it in 2019, and the last major London production before this one was Adjoa Andoh’s, which came to Richmond in 2023.However, this production from Elle While has already sparked considerable backlash for the casting of Globe boss Michelle Terry in the role of the villainous monarch, on the grounds that she’s an able-bodied actor and the character as written is disabled.Although Terry has stressed that she will not be playing Richard as disabled – but rather, a narcissist – the production has had a frosty reception so far, with manycritics citing the RSC’s 2022 production – which starred Arthur Hughes, an actor withscoliosis–as a watershed moment.Exactly what will happens remains to be seen: it could be a storm in a teacup, especially as the complaints seem largely social media drivenand there seems to bea certain lack of clarity over the fact Terry won’t be ‘cripping up’. Nonetheless, even if she carries it off successfully, the role hasundeniably tended to go to able-bodied actors performing with a limp, which feels dicey in 2024 – a lot of people will be watching to see how this production is received.
- Shakespeare
Having directed a couple of shows in the Sam Wanamaker, hip director Jude Christian makes the leap to the main Globe theatre for the first time as she tacklesa typically thorny play; Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’. Despite – or perhaps because of – the almost undeniable misogyny in the way Petruchio sets about ‘taming’ the truculent Katherine, the play remains impressively popular as a creative challenge to directors, who tend to find inventive ways to either mitigate its misogyny or use it to make audiences feel uncomfortable. There’s not much of a clue as to the aesthetic, though the words ‘absurd carnival’ are bandied around in the official description.
- Shakespeare
The unexpected furor over Michelle Terry playing Richard III hassomewhatovershadowed the fact that Shakespeare’s Globe has a disabled lead for one of its big productions this summer, in the form of Nadia Nadarajah. The deaf actor has been a regular on the Globe’s stage in recent years, and in 2024 she’ll take on the role of Egyptian queen Cleopatra in Blanche McIntyre’s bilingual English/BSL production of Shakespeare’s great Roman tragedy.
4 out of 5 stars
- Shakespeare
This review is from 2023. ‘The Comedy of Errors’ return for 2024.‘The Comedy of Errors’ can sometimes feel like a less successful dry run for themore grown-up ‘Twelfth Night’, both beingtwin sibling-based mistaken identity comedies set in coastal cities. But where ‘Twelfth Night’ is melancholic and profound, ‘The Comedy’ is so fundamentally lacking in emotional weightthat modern directors have a tendency to really overwork the physical business when staging it,worried that the language isn’t enough to secure the laughs required to justify the endeavour.Sean Holmes’s deft Globe production steers an almost effortless path through it, however. It’s less conceptual than some of his shows at the iconic theatre, though there does seem to be a whole thing going on with the cast wearing wilfully old-school Elizabethan-style costumes - there are a lot of codpieces in the house.Mostly, though, he just makes it fun. Breezing in at an hour and 45 minutes with no interval, it’s an uncluttered production that avoids gimmickry. When the National Theatre did it about ten years ago the production featured a live ambulance on stage for whatever reason. This one puts storytelling at the centre: with a lack of extraneous physical business, it’s about as easy as is ever going to be to follow the plot about two sets of identical twin brothers, with the same names as each other, who are separated as children and grow up in different, rival city-states, now causing merry heck as they end up
- Drama
The first new play proper to run outdoors at the Globe since ‘I, Joan’, actor Anne Odeke’s play tells the extraordinary story of Princess Dinubolu, the first woman of colour to enter a beauty pageant in the UK: way back in 1908, Southend-on-Sea. Almost certainly not a princess, the mysterious woman was initially barred from the contest, but insisted upon entering – and succeeded after no rules were found stopping her. Odeke stars, in a production directed by Robin Belfield.
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