Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and King Lear

Sunday, I decided to check out the Globe Theatre.

The theatre is located next to the Tate Modern along the river. The theatre is a faithful reconstruction of the open air playhouse in which Shakespeare worked and wrote many of his greatest plays. I took that description from their website so follow the link for more fun facts. The theatre is basically shaped like an O with a big hole in the roof. Most of the seated areas are covered and dry but they sell standing room tickets as well which aren't covered. First of all, if you get the chance, buy the standing tickets for 5 pounds and stand right next to the stage. It almost makes you become part of the play. It's also the place where you might be able to hear all the dialogue.

Fortunately in 1599 there were no airplanes and helicopters flying over to disturb the performance. Unfortunately in 2008, there are a lot of them. And of course there is the rain. As I mentioned in the last post, the rain didn't like having the day off on Saturday, so it's rained every day since. The rain during the performance caused a lot of people to put their ponchos on or open umbrellas so they could stay dry. The ponchos were fine, but the umbrellas caused mass grumbling from the crowd and mass censorship from the staff, which kind of made you miss a lot of the action and dialogue.

The play of course was King Lear. Now just in case you don't know the story here is my condensed version. Those of you in school that might be tested on this at a future date should be warned that I have not read the play and there were an awful lot of planes flying over so I might have missed a bit. So here goes, King Lear was a bit of a loon that had three daughters. Hmmm, reminds me of a brother of mine. Well, the old king was a bit tired one day and decided that he would divide his land into three and give each daughter one third. The only condition was that each daughter had to make up something nice to say about him. Seems easy enough, but of course one daughter, the youngest and the kings' favourite (although not terribly bright) decided not to play a long. You would think that she could just play a long a little to humour the nutty king, get the land, and live happily ever after. Alas no, she is exiled to France of all places. To make a long story much much shorter, the two daughters that got the land were not very nice to daddy. Daddy went more insane, the Duke of Gloucester got his eyes ripped out (that was cool, but a bit messy), war with France and the other daughter, and death. I might have skipped over a bit but to say the least it wasn't the happiest of endings. Joe (brother), if you are reading this, don't do it, you've seen what can happen. Give all of your possessions to me. I'm sure I can come up with at least one nice thing to say about you.

I really enjoyed the play. The acting was really good. The rain and the planes kind of sucked but what can you do. I'll definitely be back, A Midsummer Night's Dream is opening on the 10th of May. I bet you can't wait for the recap of that one.

I included the cast list just in case any of these guys become famous so I could say I saw them way back when they played at the Globe.

Cast
Ben Bishop Burgundy
Sally Bretton Goneril
Kellie Bright Regan
David Calder Lear
Paul Copley Kent
Kurt Egyiwan Curan
Trystan Gravelle Edgar
Peter Hamilton Dyer Cornwall
Daniel Hawksford Edmond
Fraser James Albany
Danny Lee Wynter Fool
Paul Lloyd Old Man / Doctor
Kevork Malikyan Knight
Jodie McNee Cordelia
Joseph Mydell Gloucester
Ashley Rolfe Oswald
Beru Tessema France

Pamela Hay Mna Siubhail, a ballad singer
Arngeir Hauksson, Claire McIntyre, Nicholas Perry, Corrina Silvester Musicians

This is a water fountain. Place your cup under the pitcher for it to be filled.

This statue is nowhere near the Globe but I thought it was cool. It's actually outside of the Southwark Cathedral near London Bridge and Borough Market but I forgot to put it in that post.