Never in more than 20 years’ experience of Shakespeare’s Globe and its open-air summer vicissitudes have I been so infuriated by overhead aircraft. In three hours, the press night of The Winter’s Tale was loudly overflown more than 30 times. There was even a coincidental distinction between the play’s two principal locations, with the kingdom of Bohemia apparently favouring circling helicopters rather than Sicilia’s zooming airliners. Thankfully, the skies cleared for the climax, in some ways the most magical scene Shakespeare ever wrote, in which a supposed statue of the wronged queen Hermione appears to come to life for a reunion with husband Leontes after his grieving for sixteen years over the injustice he did her by accusing her of infidelity.

Will Keen is a wonderfully thoughtful actor; you can almost see the gears whirring inside that dome of his. It makes him fine casting as Leontes, whose deepening jealousy we must follow through the first two acts... but not necessarily at the Globe, where the audience does like to take every opportunity it thinks it sees to laugh. Keen sows and cultivates the seeds of Leontes’ pathology carefully, but his very first words the other night were rewarded with chuckles.

Blanche McIntyre turns in a rare undistinguished production. Keen is, as I say, first-rate, and is matched by the generally underrated Sirine Saba as Paulina, Hermione’s plain-speaking defender. (Saba also plays her character’s personal conclusion beautifully, as Leontes marries her off to a more or less complete stranger simply for the sake of a neat ending.) Elsewhere, i.e. Bohemia, the rustic revelry is insufficiently infectious. Becci Gemmell is pert as the trickster Autolycus in torn-off denims and holey plum-coloured tights, but she needs to be outright roguish. In another bit of cross-gender casting, Annette Badland makes an excellent Old Shepherd, but there’s only so much s/he can do.

The question of whether lack of engagement with the production caused me to be more aware of the aircraft or vice versa is somewhat chicken-and-egg; I reckon the honours are around even. My ticket, referring to the gallery level and entrance gate for my seat, declared that I was in “Middle East”; if only there had been a corresponding no-fly zone.

Written for the Financial Times.