8. Chillin’ like a groundlin’ – A story of tragedy and mirth

To begin today’s blog, I would like to paint you a picture, or write a self-insert fanfiction, as it may be. But first, a cute picture of me from this morning, which Kaylee sent to the group chat with the caption “Cori is the bestest of friends! Care packages for friends 🫶🏼🇬🇧💂🏼” See? My friends like me.

Anyway, let me paint the picture. You’ve been out of class for about an hour or two, so it’s around lunchtime. Between class and the showing of Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe that you’re supposed to be seeing at 3 PM, you decide to waste time at TK Maxx, because who wouldn’t want to do that? To be safe, you arrived back at the hotel to relax and prepare to journey to the meetup location a solid two hours early. You open your phone once you get back on wifi to a horrifying message from Shawn Irish that reads “ALERT ALERT!! Today’s performance is at 2:00! MEET AT ST. PAUL’s TUBE STATION AT 1:00pm. SHOW IS AT 2:00PM!!” This message was sent at 11:59. It is 1 PM. The room is sent into a flurry of frantic readying and propelled out of the door by a mix of anxiety and confusion. You rush to the tube station, get on the first one, realize you are going in the wrong direction before switching lines to get as close to the theatre as you possibly can. You can’t possibly make the tube run any faster, though you wish you could. As soon as possible, you surface at a tube stop you’ve never been to before and rush across a bridge that is not the correct one, just to find Shakespeare’s Globe in a way that apparently shouldn’t be possible, according to Shawn. You arrive twenty minutes before the performance anyway. All is well… so long as you don’t count the mass amounts of anxiety caused by the entire situation.

Well, that’s about how the beginning of mine, Emma, and Kaylee’s journey to the Globe worked out yesterday.

After that, things began to look up. We got in smoothly, and I pretty much immediately decided to stand for the performance in the area of the theatre where the “groundlings” would have stood in Shakespeare’s day. I quickly found that this was the correct choice for me in the ideal of having the best possible experience during the show. Though my feet hurt terribly by the end of it, I got a wonderful view of the architecture of the theatre alongside the set, which was very nicely integrated, with the bones of the theatre showing underneath. It was absolutely beautiful. 

I initially expected there to be production elements in the show based on the advertisements’ colorfulness. My expectation was changed in class, when Shawn mentioned that productions at the Globe are generally performed under original practices. This would mean no set, if that were true; it was truly a wonderful surprise to see that they did utilize a fairly minimal set design that reflected the colorfulness of the advertisements I had seen online and in the tube stations. It brought a life to the show that could not have been achieved on a bare stage.

My initial expectation was that this production would reflect modern acting practices, by way of the actors partaking in character exploration, but in a way that also explored the intentions of the original text and performance. This play simultaneously lived up to both expectations. All of the characters were exceedingly alive apart and within their actor, and part of this comes from the effect of the text being wholly honored by their presentation of the work. I think that the latter expectation, however, is what sets this piece apart from modern American Shakespeare. While both Americans and the British have an appreciation for Shakespeare, I think that Americans tend to honor Shakespeare for its versatility, whereas the British appreciate its specificity. While I think that both of these viewpoints are valid, I often find that adaptations of Shakespeare into other places or times can make the work fall a bit short, which urged on my utmost appreciation for this production. 

This production could not have occurred in the United States under any circumstances short of the entire Globe Theatre, including audience and actor alike, being plucked into the air and dropped into the middle of the United States. I say this because the uniqueness of the experience is not isolated to the people in the cast, or even the set, which could be transported. The experience of being within the Globe theatre itself is a fundamental part of the production. The set could not be placed into any other theatre, and would not be nearly as effective without the historical building (or a replica of said building) in and around it. The actors, while they could easily go on tour with this production, would not have gotten the same feedback in the United States, as theatre is not appreciated in the same way in the States as it is here. Experiencing a Shakespearean play in the Globe is an affair that cannot be replicated, more-so than theatre already is.

Even with all of the wonderful shows that we have seen so far, I can say wholeheartedly that Much Ado About Nothing was easily the most enjoyable, awe-inspiring piece we have seen yet. All of the actors in this production, and the entire team, have earned at least one new fan.

Exciting days have passed and there are exciting days to come! Signing off from the hotel lobby,
CW