I had always assumed that the Globe Theater was the original building from the 1600s. In my mind there was no way that such a monumentally important building would have been destroyed and remained that way. When I learned that the Globe that currently stands was built in the 90s I worried I wouldn’t feel as in awe of it. I was very wrong. The Globe stands out among the buildings that surround it. Even though the building is about 30-40 years old, it looks and feels like a relic from the 1600s. The thatched roof, the distressed wood, the exposed beams all come together to feel like a time capsule.
Much like the Roman Baths, stepping inside the theater feels like going back in time. The worn wooden stage, with the massive columns, the raked wooden benches as seating and the massive open space for the groundlings take you back in time. It’s so easy to imagine what it was like to experience theatre in the 1600s while in this space.
The play itself was beautiful. I was a little worried about the concept they had applied to Romeo and Juliet. From the posters it looked to be American West or American Country themed. The girls in gingham dresses, the men in three piece suits and cowboy hats and boots. As someone who grew up in the south, I was interested to see the British interpretation of a culture I was very familiar with. At first I struggled a bit with the costuming. It felt like the costuming references were a mix of Wild West, Frontier, and Southern. Benvolio looked like a banker from the Frontier in his pin stripe suit and bowler hat. Paris was wearing a blue suit, cowboy hat, and boots that I had all seen on a man in Texas right before we got on our flight to London. Romeo was wearing corduroy pants, with a faded denim vest, and a leather jacket. The music they danced to was square dance music, but they line danced instead of square dancing. I was confused as to what the exact reference they were going for. Then in the first scene of Act 2 I saw Lady Capulet’s dress and remembered seeing the exact same dress, color and cut, as a costume in a production of Oklahoma!. I started reevaluating everyone’s costume under this lens and realized it somehow all fit into the world Rogers and Hammerstein built in the 1940s.
I really enjoyed this production. I felt like it was the first time I saw a Shakespeare tragedy that didn’t feel like the director’s goal was to rip my heart out and stomp on it until I was sitting in a puddle of my tears. For the most part this production was very light hearted. Juliet was played as a 13 year old girl. Romeo felt specifically like a 17 year old boy. The nurse was funny and sassy in all the right ways and her comedic timing was excellent. Benvolio lived as a young boy who was just trying to keep up with his friends, and Mercutio was lively and zany. The only changes I would have made was regarding the death sequences. The stage combat was very well directed, the sequences were incredibly fluid and every punch was closed even from our strange angle where we were seated. But the death’s themselves seemed to be drawn out and very gory. It took a very long time for Mercutio to die. Romeo shoots Tybalt and Paris 3 times each, which felt superfluous when the shots were so loud, so commanding, and the smell of the blanks hung in the air for a long time after they were fired. To me, it was a very stark difference between the light-heartedness that was the rest of the show. And maybe that’s what the director was going for!
All in all I thought it was an incredible production, and seeing it in the Globe made it all the more special and impressive.
Theatre in London U of A 