If you are in London, going to the theatre is as much part of the experience as eating fish and chips or going up the London Eye. The city offers such a great variety of top-notch productions that there’s something for everyone either at the West End, the National Theatre or the Barbican Centre. But if you are a Shakespeare fan, then the place to go is the Globe Theatre.
On the south bank of the Thames, next to the equally famous Tate Modern art gallery, sits the modern reconstruction of the Elizabethan playhouse from Shakespeare’s time. Getting to the Globe involves changing trains and a fair bit of walking, so it is always a good idea to combine a show at the Globe with a visit to the Tate.
My afternoon got off to a great start as I came across a busker with a guitar strumming my favourite Beatles song, ‘Blackbird’, as I crossed over to the Globe from the Tate gallery. Globe is an event by itself without even accounting for the actual play. If you haven’t booked tickets well in advance, the only ones available will be those for the groundlings — the cheapest seats where you stand in front of the stage with a hundred others. That’s what we got when we went the first time. The place fills up pretty fast and you are not allowed to sit. The early birds will grab the space right in front, like at music concerts. If you are slightly older, it’s a better idea to look for curving stands that front the seating area, as you can at least lean against them. And the ushers are very strict about the ‘stand-only’ policy. They come around checking for people who, like my mother and aunt, were trying to surreptitiously sit on the floor. So while it was tiring to stand throughout the play, shivering under a steady drizzle in a thin plastic poncho, it ended up being an experience I will never forget.
Much to my happiness, the play was TheMerchant of Venice . The feeling of whispering lines under my breath, along with the actors, is one I cannot describe in words. I remember leaving the theatre feeling so thoroughly happy that I ended up buying absolutely unnecessary and overpriced memorabilia from the theatre store. But it’s a fun place. Brilliant quotes on functional cloth bags, on refrigerator magnets and, of course, the ubiquitous mugs, call out to you irresistibly. I walked away with a teal-coloured bag with ‘What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?’ a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream .
Strange as it may seem, every production at Globe isn’t top-notch. The second play I caught, Romeo and Juliet , came as a complete shock. The production was a modern interpretation that had gone horribly wrong. It contained the eccentricity of Baz Luhrmann’s version of Romeo + Juliet (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) times a hundred. The large groups of school kids in the audience — they are a fixture at the Globe — seemed equally stunned.
So watching Shakespeare at the Globe can be a hit-or-miss experience for tourists. The shows are sold well in advance. If you are booking once you arrive in London, you have to take what you get. You can, of course, queue up for hours for the returns and score big if you get a ticket for a great production, like I did the first time. Or come out feeling totally perplexed like the second.
But as you make your way back to the tube station across the Thames on the Millennium bridge, a big favourite with movie makers (it’s featured in films ranging from Harry Potter to our own Bollywood’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan ), or the Blackfriars bridge, with tonnes of tourists watching London’s skyline, dominated by St Paul’s cathedral, you know the visit was worth it, however the play turned out.
