Shakespeare’s Globe is now a significant
year-round proposition, with the opening of the indoor Sam Wanamaker
Playhouse. At 340 seats, this reproduction 17th-century playhouse is
much smaller than the main outdoor amphitheatre. Some of its fittings,
too, seem to constitute a compromise between period and contemporary
requirements… or perhaps it’s just that the place has not yet aged the
way the outdoor Globe has; certainly, no noticeable compromise seems to
have been struck with the size of 21st-century bottoms and legs.
One conspicuous area of authenticity is that, apart from the
possibility of admitting external (though still indoor) light through
windows, the Playhouse is entirely candlelit. The opening production of
John Webster’s 1613 tragedy is lit by 100 or so candles, equivalent
(I’ve looked it up) to around a 20W compact fluorescent tube. But as
another tragic heroine of the period, Lady Macbeth, observed, hell is
murky. And director Dominic Dromgoole makes full use of all available
variations so that, for instance, the scene in which the imprisoned
Duchess is visited in the dark by her brother Ferdinand is played in
complete blackout, until that grotesque waxwork tableau of her dead
family is revealed lit by an array of tealights.
One palpable impression is that, in such a different performing
environment, the Globe house style of acting in broad, clear strokes
can seem over-simplistic. This is the case with almost everyone onstage
here. Gemma Arterton’s Duchess seems at first exceedingly naïve both in
her stratagems and in whom she trusts with knowledge of her secret
marriage, then in the far grimmer second half becomes “the figure cut
in alabaster/ Kneels at my husband's tomb” rather than the flintier,
more fatalistic yet still comparatively more feeling Duchess we usually
see. Only Sean Gilder as the malcontent Bosola finds a person in his
portrayal, although David Dawson as Ferdinand is particularly skilled
at playing both the character’s encroaching madness and his initial
desire for his sister: at one point he deliberately fluffs a line so
that it becomes “I am to be— er, to
bespeak
a husband for you.”
All this is, however, simply to re-encounter the Globe style anew, and
perhaps to be too keen to decry an approach simply because it is
different. What is incontestable is that the Playhouse is a major
addition to the Bankside venue’s arsenal.
Written for the Financial
Times.