Honestly, my wife or my father should be writing this month’s column. I’m still making a film in the humid beauty of Kerala, while they’ve been traveling with shows to London (also Delhi, which seems a tad less glamorous suddenly) and watching lots of the theatre that’s on my wish list. I asked them to sub for me this time, and they both refused, so I’m now putting together an article from all their smug updates. Well, at least they seemed smug from my envious point of view.
First up, they stood on that Globe stage. Yes, that one. Sure, other people I know have done that, but this was my family, an extension of me, on that hallowed platform.
Always in season
To add to that they had two very well-received shows of Vijay Tendulkar’s A Friend’s Story (which performed earlier this year in Chennai at the Hindu Theatre Fest) as a part of the Festival of Independence, celebrating 70 years of India’s freedom from (ironically) the British. Later, I also discovered that the current season at The Globe is, thematically, Love, and that this play, an early controversial take on a taboo lesbian relationship, was also chosen to celebrate 50 years of decriminalisation of homosexuality in the U.K.
That was stuff to be proud of. Now for the stuff to be jealous of. Gifts from The Globe for cast and crew. A variety of perks for a week, including discounts on merchandise, and free entry for shows. Good seats for The Play That Goes Wrong , a show I’ve been dying to see. More about that later. The wife watched Book of Mormon , a show I believe is meant for me. She also watched a Latin American take on Much Ado About Nothing, which was so enthralling people stood and watched in the rain. Besides this, there was the little matter of her spotting Jeff Bridges, Colin Firth and Julianne Moore walking into the premiere of the Kingsman sequel, but since this article needs to focus on theatre, I’ll let it pass.
The father has a shorter trip since he has to come back and open his play for the third season of Aadyam, so he only managed to catch a show of Boudica at The Globe. The story of an early British warrior queen, part Game of Thrones and part Brexit, this production starred Gina McKee in the lead. We know her better as the lovely lady in the wheelchair in Notting Hill . So yes, he watched her perform live, and as if that were not enough, he met her backstage and chatted for a while. They even found common ground, as they both have acted in productions of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer not so long ago. Just everyday London stuff, you know.
Coming back to The Play That Goes Wrong . A group of actors come together to perform a play and it falls apart. The audience watches mishaps in the play they’re performing, and the shenanigans backstage. The wildly popular Noises Off did this years ago, but it is a format that never ceases to entertain.
Bard’s nest
I myself have been toying with this for a while. In a production of The Ugly One by Marius Von Mayenburg, I put the backstage on stage, so audiences could see actors prepping, and changing, and some silent power play. I attempted a full-fledged version of this in our take on The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol. Here too the backstage was on stage, but this time it was as audible to the people as the play the actors were attempting to perform.
We did over 30 shows, and it was pretty successful, with people responding very well to the asides and the constant breaking of the fourth wall via constant interaction with the audience, including apologies for the tomfoolery and the mess that was being created.
While Molière is credited with coming up with the terms — the fourth wall and the breaking of it — the practice was in place right from early Shakespeare performances at, no points for guessing, The Globe.
Actors in Shakespeare’s day would run through the audience (often chasing other actors onto stage), make various asides and jokes to the audience personally, and even sit with audience members or ask them to hold a crucial prop in an attempt to hide it.
It really is amazing that almost all the theatre tropes somehow find their roots in the work of The Bard. No wonder The Globe is considered a theatrical Mecca. I’ve been whining and groaning about the family’s September, but the fact is I have been there. I’ve seen actors in Victorian costumes smoke by the backstage door, and I’ve bought undiscounted coffee and fridge magnets from the store. But I need to go watch something there. And I need to stand on that stage.
Fingers and toes tightly crossed.
The writer is a theatre producer and director and hence often broke. To cope, he writes and directs films and web series and occasionally acts, albeit reluctantly.
