The Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opened several years after Mark Rylance’s tenure here as artistic director, but he takes to the unusual candlelit atmosphere of the 340-seat space with his accustomed seeming effortlessness, appearing here in a role written for him by his wife Claire van Kampen.
    
Better known as a composer, van Kampen has naturally been drawn to the story of the Italian castrato Farinelli and his sudden withdrawal from the world of opera he so bestrode to become in 1737 chamber musician to King Philippe V of Spain. Prone for much of his life to depression, which Farinelli’s singing by all accounts greatly allayed, Philippe is in van Kampen’s account eccentric at the best of times: we first see him wheeled on to the stage in bed, fishing in a goldfish bowl. Rylance’s delivery is casual, almost offhand, as if Philippe is not just accustomed to but bored with his condition and his role on the throne alike.
    
He finds an affinity between his own artificial status and the emasculated condition of Farinelli, and the singer responds, gradually dedicating himself to this unpredictable audience of one. The artificiality is explicitly staged by director John Dove: Sam Crane gives a gentle, sympathetic acting performance, but when an aria is called for (pieces by Hasse and Porpora and in particular from Handel’s Rinaldo are included), counter-tenor Iestyn Davies joins him onstage, identically dressed, to sing. It serves to make Farinelli aware of his musical gift as a kind of external visitation, much as the king wrestles with a madness which is also alien to his true personality.
    
Melody Grove as Philippe’s second wife Isabella Farnese and Edward Peel as his (predictably) hostile chief minister provide strong support, but the narrative takes second place to the twin portraiture, within which in turn Rylance inevitably places one figure distinctly further in the foreground. His performance in Jerusalem in 2009-11 made him a hot theatre ticket on both sides of the Atlantic, which is currently translating also into screen stardom, and we always know exactly who takes pride of place in this dramatic vehicle.
    
Written for the Financial Times.