Experiencing the Pop-Up Globe

"If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." (III.4.108-9)

The playhouse from Greys Ave (just before you enter the Civic carpark)

Yesterday was my first session ushering for the Pop-Up Globe. The theatre (or playhouse, to give it its Elizabethan name) is quite remarkable and there was a real buzz about the place.

The yard and galleries

The playhouse has a brilliant capacity for allowing the actors to interact with the audience - it holds 898 but because of the shape is quite intimate and no member of the audience is ever very far from the stage. Playing to the three different levels as well as around 360 degrees must be quite a challenge for the actors but they did a very good (and lively) job.

My view of the stage

My ushering job was not very strenuous and I got to see the entire play with a very good view. With three other ushers, I was in charge of the groundlings in the pit (or yard). This meant standing for the entire running length, but that was small hardship in return for a free viewing of Twelfth Night (one of my favourite Shakespeare plays) and the whole experience of the playhouse generally :)

Maria and the gloriously-named Sir Toby Belch

The performance was a special school matinee (no members of the general public allowed!). Some of the children had come up from as far as Hamilton. Intriguingly, the boys - mostly - managed to stay interested and involved throughout the whole play, but many of the girls were in and out of the theatre (this is allowed, even encouraged - apparently it is part of the 'authentic Shakespearean experience!) like yo-yos.

Some of the children were very young (well under ten). One little girl of about five or six kept hooting with laughter at the play's frequent - shall we say - adult humour, to the extreme discomfiture of the adults in charge of her!

Malvolio "practising behaviour to his own shadow"

The director and actors certainly had a field day with the comedy, to the extreme delight of the school children. Perhaps they overdid the comedy to the point of losing some of the play's pathos, especially with Malvolio, but on the whole it worked well - fast-paced and forceful; certainly there was nothing subtle about it!

The final scene - which resulted in a sudden resurgence of interest from the school children, who all swept forward towards the stage; even the yo-yo-ing girls decided it was worth coming back for.

The cast is an all-male one and in Elizabethan dress. (Feste, however, ended the play in jeans and hoodie; and Sebastian, in the capacity of witless tourist, kept whipping out a very modern camera and map - which was funny but not really in keeping with the rest of the costuming and staging). Apart from a rather peevish Viola/Cesario and the aforementioned clueless Sebastian, I loved the casting, especially Stephen Butterworth as Maria, Paul Willis as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Adrian Hooke as Feste (his Kiwi accent when teasing Malvolio was priceless). The musicians were wonderful too.

Verdict? Get thee hence and book thyself tickets!!

"But that's all one, our play is done, and we'll strive to please you every day."