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[01] London Bank Holiday Show-Going
DID SHAKESPEARE'S SECOND GLOBE REALLY LOOK LIKE THIS?——Academic & Imaginative Reconstruction of the Bard's Bankside playhouse daily crowded with eager tourists. Photo: Copyright © —Richard Kalina/1999.
[02] Old & New West End Musicals
[03] Lloyd Webber's "Whistle Down the Wind"
[04] The Play's No Longer "The Thing"
[05] Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen"
[06] New Bankside Globe Theatre
[07] Exposing the Rose
[08] Interactive Globe "Comedy of Errors"
[09] Bare-stage Globe "Antony and Cleopatra"
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
London Bank Holiday Show-Going:
Time was when a British Bank Holiday saw mass exoduses from London. And massive closures not only of banks but all kinds of stores and amenities.Now, however, international tourism has become such an industry that the sidewalks, shops, restaurants, and theatres were crowded the last week of August. But not with Londoners. Italian and German seemed to be the languages of choice wherever I went.
I go to Scotland every summer for the Edinburgh Festival—reviewed elsewhere on this site—but I've not stopped over in London in recent years. Partly because the old friend with whom I always stayed had passed on—and hotel prices seemed astronomical.
They still are, especially at some shabby hostelries who suffer from the delusion that their facilities compare favorably with Claridge's or The Savoy.
Formerly, I made a point of going to London twice a year to keep abreast of new work in theatre, dance, and opera. Increasingly, however, the West End—like Broadway—had little new or interesting to offer.
Esoteric productions really worth seeing might well turn up in New York—or across the East River at BAM. Not to mention the latest efforts of David Hare. And all those Irishmen!
The Royal Opera Covent Garden has been in disarray. Major administrative problems were exposed on television. Then this historic theatre was shut down for a major—and much needed—reconstruction.
It reopens this winter. From the handsomely renovated exterior and the magnificent new additions—seen only from the tourist-infested Covent Garden Market—it is obviously worth a rapid return to London as soon as it's again functioning.
It will premiere Bohuslav Martinu's The Greek Passion in the same David Pountney/Stefanos Lazarides production given its world premiere at the Bregenz Festival in July. From the Salzburg Festival, it is importing the overpowering Peter Sellers production of Györy Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre.
Having seen both of these in their Austrian premieres, I'm eager to discover how they translate to the renovated Covent Garden stage, long an unbelievably cramped and archaic theatre-space.
And it's high time to catch up with recent productions at ENO—the English National Opera. They lost their innovative Intendant, Peter Jonas, to Munich and the Bavarian State Opera. He has imported both the ENO style and British artists to the Bavarian capital. Now I need to check out the changes since his departure from ENO's Coliseum Theatre venue in London.
Musicals Old & New:
One very good reason for not jumping on the next Virgin flight to London to check out West End theatre is that most of its long-running staples are also Golden-Agers on Broadway.Here are some of the current musicals on view: "Chicago," "Grease," "Miss Saigon," 'Phantom of the Opera," 'Saturday Night Fever," "Rent," "West Side Story," "Les Miserables," and "The Pajama Game."
Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers"—also seen on Broadway some time ago—is now in its llth year in its second incarnation, having won the Olivier Award the first time round in 1983!
"Buddy," the Buddy Holly musical—which was seen only briefly on Broadway—is in its 10th year now. [It is also currently on view at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia!]
Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" will soon be joined by "The Lion King" at Henry Irving's handsomely renovated Lyceum Theatre.
Then there's "Mama Mia!," based on the songs of ABBA, at the Prince Edward. "4 Steps to Heaven" at the Piccadilly celebrates Elvis, Eddie, and Buddy. Not to overlook "Soul Train" at the Victoria Palace. And "Oh! What a Night" at the London Apollo—the "ultimate 70s musical."
If not the actual King of the British Musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber has by degrees become a Knight and a Lord. His annual check to the Inland Revenue must be a whopper!
Not to mention the taxes on the T. S. Eliot Estate, now that the original London "Cats" production, at the New London Theatre, is in its 18th year. Who would have thought that Eliot's cute little cat poems would have had so much blood in them?
Webber's handsome and costly Broadway production of "Starlight Express," at the Uris/Gershwin Theatre, died a speedy but undeserved death. In London, it just keeps rolling along at the Apollo Victoria Theatre.
"Phantom of the Opera" is still lucky in its 13th year at Her Majesty's Theatre.
Lord Webber's "Whistle Down the Wind"—
Brit Vision of Red-Neck Cracker White Trash
When Lloyd Webber's most recent musical, "Whistle Down the Wind," opened in the West End, some reviews were sufficiently discouraging to forestall an immediate translation to Broadway. Despite this, it is still running strong at the Aldwych Theatre.This is no mystery, especially for audiences who know nothing about poor folks in the American South. Its major appeal is in its astonishing spectacle. And a lot of generic Lloyd Webber songs, rousingly projected to the audience.
Although it is based on "the much loved film," its book is much too complicated and undefined. It looks like three of Romulus Linney's hillbilly plays gone wrong.
There are some Fundamentalist snake-handlers, for instance, but they finally figure as little more than a sideshow. There is a local Jimmy Dean, complete with cycle and Death Wish. And there is the Moral Majority, among other bits and pieces of American Poverty-Level Culture.
At the center—but too often obscured by other distractions—is the teenage Swallow, who believes an escaped murderer is Jesus Christ. Her sexuality is just awakening, and the convict's [self-inflicted] bloody wounds she takes for the Stigmata. So her pious impulses are linked to her emerging libido.
She has a gang of supsercute Colors-of-Benneton kids who help her hide the killer in a round barn. They also sing a lot, which is very annoying.
Her farmer dad and his motherless children live in an Art Deco Bambi trailer, which scoots on and off, as do other vehicles and set-props.
What was most impressive for me, however, were the stunning settings. When was the last time you saw a complete stage-set rise up in the air and disappear above the proscenium opening? With actors on it? Even with flaming torches?
Several times this upper-deck set is a bend in a highway, with appropriate billboards. At others, it is transformed into various locales.
Below it is another stage-surface, complete with traps and structural members which rise up out of it. The repeated and varied effects of moving between these two playing surfaces—and the surprises they disclose—are alone worth the price of a ticket.
But I was not about to pay $5 for the program, having already paid for my ticket—which critics don't do in New York. So I cannot cite the names of the brilliant designers and the energetic performers who deserve credit for treating this dramatic hodgepodge seriously.
Several London critics whom I respect have tag-lines quoted in the promo-brochure for "Whistle Down the Wind." Charles Spencer, of the "Daily Telegraph": "Lloyd Webber's best show since 'Phantom.'" Meaning that he liked it better than "Sunset Boulevard"?
Michael Coveny, of the "Daily Mail," is quoted thus: "A superb, uplifting evening."
He must have been reading from the brochure, which insists the show is: "…an extraordinary and uplifting tale about the transforming power of love, proving that goodness can be found in the strangest of places."
Not at the Aldwych Theatre certainly!
Ultimately, I found this theatre-event depressing—despite the stunning visual effects. There are too many frayed story-lines, too many undeveloped characters, and finally no real resolution. And too many songs, in varied modes and moods, randomly thrown into this musical stew.
Nonetheless, with some really courageous cutting and restructuring, this show might just make it on Broadway. Especially with its powerful spectacle.
The Play's No Longer "The Thing"
Serious drama, as on Broadway, is a risky business in the West End. Comedy is more appealing to audiences, many of whom don't go to the theatre to think. Or for whom English is a poor second as a language.What does it suggest about the state of London commercial theatre that "Forbidden Broadway" was imported from its intimate cellar-theatre in New York to the proper Albery Theatre? Or that Rob Becker's monologue, "Defending the Caveman"—seen in Manhattan at the tiny Helen Hayes—is playing on Shaftesbury Avenue at the Apollo?
At the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus, Off-Broadway's "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)" is now in its third year!
But then Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" is now in its 47th year at St. Martin's.
Often announced for Broadway—but fortunately not yet produced here—"The Woman in Black" is now in its 10th year at the Fortune.
Liz Locheads's "Perfect Days" was an Edinburgh Fringe favorite last summer on a very small stage at the Traverse Theatre. Now it's on the Strand at the Vaudeville. "Drummers," shown in the same Edinburgh venue this summer, has just moved south of the border to the New Ambassadors.
The National Theatre production of Priestley's "An Inspector Calls"—which had a long Broadway run—is endlessly alive and well at the Garrick. "ART" has just closed on Broadway, but it's still playing at Wyndham's. And the vastly overpraised "The Weir" is still wallowing in Stage Irishness both at the Duke of York's and in New York.
Declan Donnelly—an innovative director very popular with BAM audiences—has brought Sophocles' "Antigone" to the Old Vic and staged Noël Coward's "Hay Fever" at the Savoy.
The Chichester Festival production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" is at the Haymarket, longtime home of indestructible classics of the British stage. This has been staged by the ingenious Christopher Morahan.
Morahan has also directed Ronald Harwood's new play, "Quartet," which has just followed "Forbidden Broadway" at the Albery. It wasn't yet open on Bank Holiday, so I have to return to London soon to savor the acting foursome of Alec McCowen, Donald Sinden, Angela Thorne, and Stephanie Cole.
Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen"—
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle on Stage!
Some Cultural Moralists object to spending tax-monies to subsidize Royal Shakespeare or National Theatre productions which later move to the West End. Some insist this is using the public purse to enrich the commercial theatre.They argue that Britain's subsidized institutional theatres are in danger of becoming tryout houses for the West End. This controversy has been going on for decades now, but it is specious.
In the case of most transfers—the best of which often reach Broadway as well—the plays would never have been considered by commercial producers. Both new scripts and difficult or forgotten classics have been brought to life for a much wider audience than those of the NT, RSC, and Royal Court.
The splendid, thought-provoking National Theatre production of Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen," now at the lovely Duchess Theatre, is a case in point.
Who would have thought that a play based on the relationship between theoretical physicists Werner Heisenberg and his mentor, Niels Bohr, could have a commercial run?
In fact, excellent as the performances are, handsome as the production is, this seems an unlikely candidate for a Broadway transfer. But it would certainly be interesting to see if it can find an audience in New York.
Heisenberg is known—if indeed he is known at all to the wider public—as the discoverer of the Uncertainty Principle. But to scientists and historians, he is also the brilliant mind who was helping the Nazis develop nuclear fission for wartime applications.
Bohr, on the other hand, was a Danish Jew—and a father-figure for Heisenberg, his student and colleague. And he escaped the Nazi purge of Jews in Copenhagen at the last minute, to help the Allies with research that led to the Atom Bomb.
The dialogue is uncompromising in dealing with essentials of nuclear physics, but Frayn has managed to make extremely complex and arcane atomic information almost matter-of-fact.
This is greatly helped by the forceful, even emotional, articulation of principles and discoveries by David Baron, as Bohr, and William Brand, as Heisenberg. Corinna Marlowe is also impressive as Margrethe Bohr, both as a catalyst and buffer between the older man and the younger.
She is also a commentator, putting the actions, events, emotions, and ideas into a sharper focus.
The central dramatic device is a strange last meeting during wartime between Bohr and Heisenberg, already embarked on potentially devastating research for the Nazis. Frayn replays this meeting several times, seen from imagined viewpoints by the three characters.
What did Heisenberg really want from Bohr, coming to Nazi Occupied Copenhagen at that most crucial and dangerous time? Did he really know himself?
What happened on their brief evening walk that destroyed their friendship forever?
Frayn presents Heisenberg as a dedicated scientist, not a racist, but a man who is so involved in his researches he hardly considers the human consequences of what the Nazis are doing. He presents a passionate justification for his work as a German who loves his homeland.
But Frayn suggests that he also had misgivings about the uses to which nuclear discoveries might be put by his paymasters. That he did not manage to help Germany develop an atomic bomb, however, may also have been the result of a mathematical miscalculation.
The severely simple stage-set is a university lecture-amphitheatre—with audience-members seated in the tiers above the trio of actors. It's also something like a Bull Ring, with three extremely intelligent people trying to come to terms with the complex implications of the obligations of Friendship and Science.
I was lucky to get a seat at the last minute. Seen from the last row of the balcony—fortunately, the Duchess is one of those marvelous quasi-court-theatres—the stage-floor's circular patterns also suggest orbits, intersected by a sharp wedge.
Peter J. Davison designed this very effective set, which was made even more interesting by the subtle lighting changes of Mark Henderson.
Praise also to director Michael Blakemore for his skillful use of this confining arena, orchestrating his actors so they never seemed static or involved in separate monologues. Even when they were thinking out loud, or sharing with the audience, but not with the others on stage.
This is such a powerful drama—despite its theoretical discussions of particle physics—that it deserves productions by leading regional theatres in the United States. One of these subsidized stagings might just make it to Broadway—or to BAM—if the London one does not.
At the very least, those who long for more serious drama should get the text and read and re-read it. It's published by Methuen.
The New Bankside Globe Theatre:
When Newsweek's theatre and film critic Jack Kroll returned from London—and a visit to the newly opened Shakespeare's Globe Theatre—he phoned me to say: "Joan and I saw your stone at the Globe!"
Sam Wanamaker's Living Memorial!That was back in 1997.
I'd been coming to the Globe site on the South Bank of the Thames every summer since Sam Wanamaker began his campaign to recreate Shakespeare's theatre. Sam and I would discuss the slow but determined progress toward the realization of his dream.
And I wrote about the very slow developments for a variety of publications, which Sam appreciated. He was a wonderfully kind, thoughtful, and wryly humorous man of the theatre. It was an honor and a pleasure to spend time with Sam Wanamaker.
I'd first come to know of his love of Shakespeare when he began the Liverpool Shakespeare Theatre in the 1950s. A victim of McCarthyism and blacklists, he'd emigrated to England.
And I was near Liverpool, at Burtonwood Air Force Base, teaching English to American servicemen. Long before the Beatles.
As an actor, director, fund-raiser, and theatre-visionary, Sam was a wonder. And he did more for British theatre than anyone was willing to admit, even shortly before his death.
Every summer, Sam would program events or productions on or near the site to create interest in the project. And to raise money.
The news stories in the dailies invariably referred to him as "the American actor-director." That really irked him, as he'd spent so much of his professional life in Britain.
I told him he'd just have to settle for seeing his daughter's name in print as "the British actress, Zoë Wanamaker."
In the early years, there was not much interest or support from Brits for the Globe Project. It was dismissed by some Movers-and-Shakers as a typically American notion, which would only appeal to American tourists.
Considering the fact that I had been following the fortunes of the Globe for so long—including giving a paper on American versions of the Globe Theatre at a definitive conference on restoring the Globe at the University of Georgia—I'm still puzzled why I didn't go over for the opening.
At least I could have looked at my stone. But no one invited me, so I let the moment pass. They at least did send me a map showing where my stone is located.
It is right in the Door 3 Entrance, not far from Laurence Olivier's stone, and Vivian Leigh's. On this past Bank Holiday, I brushed some dirt from the carving and made a photo of the legend: GLENN LONEY.
Now you have the opportunity to walk all over me and enjoy Shakespeare at the same time.
Jack Kroll liked the idea of having one's name on the New Globe, but they weren't engraving any new stones. Now, however, you can add your own name to the long roll of sponsors and donors.
Thanks to computer-scanner technology, it won't be block letters as mine is. No, your very own autograph can be up on the Supporting Wall of the great Globe Exhibition for millions to see for many, many years.
A donation of £200 will guarantee your signature on that wall. £350 pays for two signatures, and £500 will permit you to add two other signatures to yours.
Shakespeare's surviving signatures are notorious: he didn't seem to have made up his mind how to spell Shakespeare. Or some signatures may be pro forma signings by notaries.
You won't have the Bard's spelling problems, especially if your name is Smith or Jones. Even if you have not yet toured the new Globe Theatre, or seen a play on its open stage, you can send in your signature, preferably also with your signature on a check!
More information can be obtained from:
THE APPEALS DEPARTMENT
THE SHAKESPEARE GLOBE TRUST
21 NEW GLOBE WALK
SOUTHWARK/LONDON SE1 9DT
GREAT BRITAINCalled "All The World's A Stage," the exhibition in the undercroft of the theatre-complex will be the largest exhibition in the world devoted to the Bard and his theatre. Currently, a much smaller display is housed in the shell of the Inigo Jones Cockpit Theatre, yet to be outfitted for indoor Elizabethan and Jacobean play performances.
Exposing The Rose:
Despite the lack of specific details about the actual Globe Theatres, I and II, a corner section of the original foundations were briefly excavated on its site. Sam and the Museum of London site-supervisor showed these to me so I could photograph them.This intriguing glimpse of the Globe's past was uncovered shortly after the foundations of the nearby Rose Theatre had been partially excavated. I was able to make some good photos of Sam and this site as well. He was an enthusiastic leader in the campaign to Save the Rose and complete the archeologiacal excavations.
Unfortunately, the developers of what is now the Rose Court office-complex—already having delayed clearing of the site for their new building—couldn't wait for more detailed archeological work. The Rose Court rose up and up.
Fortunately, however, there had been such an outcry about saving the Rose ruins—with major stars grandstanding at the site—that the remains were not buried again in concrete, but have been preserved as a ghostly basement survival.
The foundations have now been flooded with water, as they were becoming unstable when they dried out, after some hundreds of years in the soggy subsoil of the Thameside.
The Rose Theatre Exhibition —entered from a street-level door in the Rose Court structure on 56 Park Street—has been designed by William Dudley, who created the Met Opera's magnificent "Billy Budd" warship.
The greenly illuminated low walls seem to float in a mysterious lake, with lighting changes to indicate the two versions of the Rose. An informative film is projected from above on two screens.
This includes some delightful clips from "Shakespeare in Love," the film that has surely helped the new Globe sell out shows this summer.
Of course, "Standing Room Only" was no novelty even in Shakespeare's time. Now, as then, the thrust stage of the Globe is flanked by standees.
Donations to the Rose Exhibition are being banked with a view to funding further excavation and development of a permanent public exhibition site.
They were fresh out of brochures when I came by—so great has been the interest in the Rose ruins—that I don't have a phone or fax number to share. But letters addressed to the Rose Project at 56 Park Street, Bankside, Southwark, London, ought to find their target.
Interactive "Comedy of Errors":
Groundlings Get Involved in the Show
One of Sam Wanamaker's compelling reasons for wanting to recreate Shakespeare's Globe—as accurately as informed conjecture could make possible—was to discover more about the plays themselves, from performing them as the Bard and his fellow-players may have done.
MODERN GROUNDLINGS GET INVOLVED IN THE ACTION——Vicenzo Nicoli and Marcello Magni fascinate their audience in the Globe Theatre's new "Comedy of Errors" staging. Photo: Copyright © —Donald Cooper/1999. He had even performed in a 1930s American attempt to recreate the Globe, Thomas Wood Stevens' Old Globe—which is still being used in San Diego. But he thought that the various American versions of the Globe made too many compromises with modern staging and theatre-technologies.
When I noted that he'd have to have an all-male ensemble for starters, he brushed the suggestion aside. He didn't want to discriminate against female performers. The drag-show inferences for modern audiences may also have bothered him.
"Shakespeare in Love," however, managed this important feature of Elizabethan stage-production very effectively—even amusingly. And Globe Director Mark Rylance has already mixed men and women in female roles, with mixed results.
Tour guides in the new Globe make much of the preservation of Elizabethan traditions and skills in construction and performance. Carpentry with wooden-peg joints, costumes tailored in the old way—without zippers or Velcro—and similar deliberate archaisms.
The open stage is even swept with twig-brooms—or besoms—by menials.
Nonetheless, there are London laws about fire-prevention, marked exits, and other matters of public safety and access. And surely Shakespeare's audiences did not have flush-toilets.
Under a warm afternoon sun, the current production of "The Comedy of Errors"— staged by Master of Play, Kathryn Hunter—amply demonstrated Sam's belief that we'd learn more about the playing of the plays in a reconstructed Globe.
With three entrance/exit doors—the central one also being used for inner scenes and set-props shoved downstage—scene follows scene rapidly and seamlessly. There's never a break for scene-changes or mood-changes.
The energy builds, the pace quickens, the excitement mounts.
Of course some of this has been happening for decades at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in "America's First Elizabethan Theatre" in Ashland.
But it has always had rows of seats right up to the lip of its broad open stage. No groundlings leaning into the action or offering advice and opinions.
It's not possible to know what kind of improv Shakespeare and his players may have used at the Globe—but some of it has surely been preserved in the texts—printed from prompt-scripts.
The two Dromios, playing off good-natured standees, provide some marvelous comic moments. Entrances and exits through the audience also invite various kinds of interaction—not all of it amused. Some soreheads just won't get into the mood of the theatre-event.
This production is enlivened by a lot of raunchy, randy visual comedy—some of it certainly suggested in textual lines. This helps keep sleepy Senior Citizens, non-English-speakers, and impatient kids alert and with-it.
For many years, in Ashland, Oregon, the plays were performed uncut, without intermission. Not anymore. With scores of Seniors in the audiences, this was just too cruel on the aged bladders.
Nor are Rylance and his ensemble determined at the new Globe to preserve a continuous dramatic flow.
Standees certainly need a break. During the interval, some back-packer groundlings hunkered down in the arena for impromptu picnics.
I didn't see any Orange Girls peddling their wares. Or was that only in the Restoration Theatre?
House ushers, however, were busy helping people find their seats and keeping groundlings off the stairs. Once the play got underway, they were as involved in the action of the play as the paying audience!
There is a lot of mugging and low, low comedy in this "Comedy of Errors," but there is also some lusty Eros as well. It is great fun, though some of the cast seem underprepared for professional work.
Despite tour-guides' boasts of the excellent acoustic of the Globe, some of these unsure players were almost inaudible. As the company is chosen from hopefuls worldwide, there should be no shortage of professionals who can master Shakespeare's texts and his stage.
Bare-stage "Antony and Cleopatra":
Mark Rydell as the Boisterous African Queen
Another compromise with standard Elizabethan practice—playing afternoons under natural light, with the arena unroofed—is the new Globe's addition of strong, neutral white lights at the tops of the bays of the galleries.
ALL FOR LOVE——Paul Shelley as an infatuated Marc Antony and Mark Rylance as a tempestuous Cleopatra in the Globe Theatre production of Shakespeare's "Antony & Cleopatra." Photo: Copyright © —John Tramper/1999. This permits both afternoon and evening performances. This compromise is very important when there are ever more hordes of tourists clamoring to see a show in the Globe, after making the tour and seeing the exhibition.
Although the new Globe has the only thatched roof in London since the Great Fire, another compromise is the installation of sprinklers along the roofline. These are barely noticeable—but greatly comforting, considering that the First Globe burned down because of a thatch fire.
Despite the thatch, a bad rainstorm is still bad news for performances. The galleries are covered, as is the stage, in keeping with tradition. But modern groundlings are not going to stand in a drizzle for two or three hours.
Fortunately for the evening performance of "Antony and Cleopatra," the weather held. And the white lights provided sufficient illumination of the gaudily decorated stage-facade and the colorfully costumed actors.
As in Shakespeare's time, costumes and props—with actors occasionally telling the audiences where the scene is set—suggest the locales. This is sparely yet effectively accomplished in "A&C," where the action swings between the luxurious warmth of Ptolemaic Egypt and the coldly Imperial Rome of Octavius Caesar, Antony's nemesis.
Years ago, at UC/Berkeley—where I was head of lighting for the Department of Drama—I worked through some 45 rehearsals and performances of "Antony and Cleopatra." I knew it almost by heart then, and it is still one of my favorite dramas.
Since then, although it's not often staged, I've seen some very disappointing productions—including one at the National Theatre, with Judy Dench and Anthony Hopkins.
So I was delighted to discover—just as Sam Wanamaker believed—that the new stage-audience relationships produce some new line-readings and textless stage-action, which gave new, important meanings to characters, motivations, and events in the play.
Paul Shelley was excellent as Antony, in command of men, but not of his passions or his skittish mistress, Cleopatra.
Facing capture and being exposed to the taunts of vulgar Romans in Caesar's Triumphal Procession, Cleopatra is determined that no child will "boy my greatness" in parade travesties.
This is a marvelous internal irony, for the role in Shakespeare's Globe would surely have been acted by a handsome boy-player.
In the current production—staged by Giles Block—the great Egyptian Queen is impersonated not by a lovely stripling, but by Mark Rylance himself.
Rylance is, to say the least, hardly in the first bloom of youth. Nor is he a great beauty in drag.
In the play, Cleopatra is by no means a lovely young maiden either. But, even with her erotic conquests and testimonial children already behind her, she is still supposed to be a mysterious, fascinating, captivating woman.
There are moments when Rylance does indeed suggest this. But either he or Block have paid too much attention to reports in the text of Cleopatra's skipping through the marketplace and similar hoydenish behavior.
As a result, Rylance seems often in unnecessary—and unalluring—motion, swirling about the stage, hopping this way and that. He seems more a wayward Gypsy dancer than the Serpent of Old Nile.
At times, however, this well suggested the captious, moody nature of Antony's lover.
As Cleopatra's women, Charmian and Iras, Danny Sapani and James Gillan played these delightful female roles with charm, wit, and dignity.
So the new Globe is a must for my next trip to London—unless it's in winter when performances are impossible. I urge any readers planning a visit to London, even in bad weather, to at least take the Globe Tour and see the new exhibition.
And, even if you won't see your name up in lights, you can at least have your autograph up there with Shakespeare's! [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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