Publication... of a kind...

Heresy! Dr Paul Moon argues in the NZ Herald that we should no longer bother with Shakespeare.

Today sees my first post-Master's 'publication,' in the form of a letter to the NZ Herald. Admittedly, not quite the Past and Present journal, and the Herald's impact factor is precisely nil, but still... young fledgling academics must start somewhere!

(Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them... and Master's students waiting for their exam results know that greatness is not for them.)

This article appeared in the paper on Monday: Dr Paul Moon | Is Shakespeare now irrelevant?

... prompting this response:

Three cheers for Shakespeare

Here are some photos of 'Saturday night at the Pop-Up Globe' - another packed performance of Twelfth Night. Sold-out performances are almost commonplace now, but this one was extra-special because it celebrated, of course, Shakespeare's birth and the 400th anniversary of his death.

Before the performance began Miles Gregory, the founder and director, appeared on stage to a solid round of applause. His speech encompassed his two-fold vision for the Pop-Up Globe - to educate audiences about Shakespeare, his plays and his theatre, and to make Shakespeare accessible - both in terms of experiencing the plays in the space they were originally intended for, and in affordability (a third of the playhouse tickets - the groundlings - are priced at just $15). He then led the audience in three lusty cheers for William Shakespeare, which was followed up in the interval by an equally rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday to you dear Shakespeare" initiated by Feste!

The Globe at night

My second home ;)

Waiting for the gates to open

Ushers receiving their briefing

Miles Gregory

Tobias Grant, Pop-Up Globe's Executive Producer, investigates the playhouse bar

Shakespearean ice-creams ;)

'Here is my space, kingdoms are clay' - staking a pitch among the rest of the groundlings!

Isabel gazes upwards in awe and wonder ;)

Forest of rafters (this is the underside of the stage roof)

Musicians among the groundlings

Photos courtesy of Daddy.

"Words, words, words..."

Since NZ is half a day ahead of England, over there it is still April 23rd, so what better excuse to begin today with some of my favourite Shakespearean speeches (as promised in yesterday's post).

So, without more ado, here we go (in no particular order):

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul within the house;

Write loyal cantons of contemnéd love,

And sing them loud even in the dead of night;

Hallow your name to the reverberate hills,

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out 'Olivia!' O you should not rest 

Between the elements of air and earth

But you should pity me!

Twelfth Night I.5.223-32

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Hamlet V.2.352-3 

ORSINO: And what's her history?

VIOLA: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment like a worm i'th'bud

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed

Our shows are more than will: for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Twelfth Night II.4.105-14

What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wand'ring stars and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

Hamlet the Dane.

Hamlet V.1.238-42

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tunéd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights 

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pocket.

Antony and Cleopatra V.2.81-91

Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,

Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

For Cassius is a-weary of the world:

Hated by one he loves, brav'd by his brother,

Check'd like a bondman, all his faults observ'd,

Set in a notebook, learn'd, and conn'd by rote,

To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep

My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger

And here my naked breast; within, a heart

Dearer than Pluto's mine, richer than gold.

If that thou beest a Roman take it forth,

I that denied thee gold will give my heart:

Strike as thou didst at Caesar. For I know

When thou didst hate him worst thou loved'st him better

Then ever thou lov'd'st Cassius. 

Julius Caesar IV.3.93-107 

Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!

Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!

Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood!

Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

Richard III V.4.339-42

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime 

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid - 

Weak masters though ye be - I have bedimm'd

The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,

And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault

Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's sout oak

With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory 

Have I made shake, and by the spurts pluck'd up

The pine and cedar. Graves at my command

Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth

By my so potent art. But this rough magic

I here abjure; and when I have requir'd

Some heavenly music - which even now I do - 

To work mine end upon their sense that

This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I'll drown my book. 

The Tempest V.1 33-57

Not a whit. We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. 

Hamlet V.2.204-7 

Shakespeare and I

He was not of an age, but for all time!

~

 Ben Jonson

Frontispiece to the First Folio

Unless you live under a rock, you are probably aware that today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. It is also, according to folklore, the 452nd anniversary of his birth. His actual birth date is, like so much of his life, a mystery, but we do know he was baptised on the 26th April; in the sixteenth century children were usually baptised around three days after birth, so by counting backwards we arrive at the 23rd. 

The 23rd April also happens to be St George's Day - despite never having set foot on English soil, St George is the country's patron saint. As with Shakespeare's life, the details of St George's are murky, comprised chiefly of folklore, myth and legend. Shakespeare, however, was at least English, and his plays - despite their huge variety of settings, from ancient Rome to the fictional Illyria - are saturated with the sights, scents and sounds of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

I was introduced to Shakespeare at the age of eight, at a production of The Tempest at Huntingdon's George Inn. The George is a seventeenth-century coaching inn, with the four walls surrounding an inner courtyard:

via

It is thought that touring play companies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used such courtyards as performance spaces, and the George still stages a play in this manner every summer:

via

This year, fifteen years after I first saw the play, it is the turn of The Tempest again, and I just happen to be visiting England in late June/early July, so... watch this space!

I understood very little (if any) of that first Tempest, but I remember three things very clearly: the shipwreck (which was rigged up - pardon the pun - at the back of the raked seating, so that the sailors came down through the audience onto the stage); Ariel's singing; and Caliban, who emerged from under a piece of sacking munching on a huge slice of watermelon. Even now, whenever I think of The Tempest that image of Caliban and watermelon is the first thing that comes into my head.

Similarly, The Merchant of Venice, which I saw at the George a couple of years after The Tempest, also left me with one over-riding image: Shylock approaching a bare-chested Antonio with a knife and a set of weighing scales to extract his pound of flesh, which frankly terrified me.

After that I could never garner much fondness of The Merchant of Venice, but "going to see Shakespeare" remained very much a part of my life. It has become a family tradition to go at least once a year to open-air summer productions, either at the Pumphouse or at Auckland University (or both!). I also remember going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream on a very cold and wet winter's night at the Dolphin Theatre, and The Winter's Tale on a similarly dreary winter's night at a tiny little theatre in Ellerslie.

Although I visited the London Globe in both 2002 and 2015, actually seeing a play there has so far eluded me (I will one day!). But this summer Auckland has hosted the Pop-Up Globe - a scaffolding replica, claimed to be accurate to within about an inch, of Shakespeare's second Globe. It is a good deal smaller than the London Globe, and sixteen-sided rather than twenty. Scholars have been arguing about the dimensions of the Globe for decades. The Pop-Up Globe boffins argue that theirs is the correct size (well, they would say that, wouldn't they!) and that the London Globe is too big. Needless to say, the scholars behind the London Globe are not too happy about this, but recent archeological excavations there do seem to suggest that it was built too large.

My scrapbook from 2002: visit to the London Globe

Me as a ten-year-old twinkie at the London Globe

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have spent many happy hours at the Pop-Up Globe as an usher, managing to see Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra and (as a paying audience member) The Tempest. Twelfth Night is by far my favourite. So far I have seen it four times, and tonight will be the fifth :D

The Pop-Up Globe has been an enormous success in terms of tickets sold (most performances have been sold out or nearly so), but also (and arguably more importantly) in making Shakespeare accessible and enjoyable. One of the best things about working there has been watching the school children watch the plays. Very, very few of them have been bored or disinterested; most of them look as if they are having the time of their lives. 

Maria and Sir Toby Belch entertain school children at the Pop-Up Globe

So Shakespeare has certainly come to life for me this summer. As I overhead one small girl saying after a school matinee of Twelfth Night, "my life has been enriched!"  But although the plays are meant to be watched, not merely read, years of studying the plays, and working very closely with their language and text, has made watching them now even more enjoyable. I spent the three years of my high school exams working on Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. 

My school copies of Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Yes, I like to scribble in my books.

Because I know them so well, these plays are among my favourites. At university I studied many more of the plays, but in too much of a hurry; in three 12-week courses we got through  Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, and The Comedy of Errors, mixed in with several other Elizabethan/Jacobean plays - the result being that I have a passing acquaintance with each of these texts but know none of them nearly as well as I would like. For what it's worth, I do think that university undergraduate English courses should teach fewer texts in more detail.

The Shakespeare section of my bookshelf

My favourite Shakespeare play? For years it was Hamlet, with Twelfth Night a close second... but the Pop-Up Globe has reminded me how much I love Twelfth Night, with the result that Hamlet is perilously close to being knocked off the top spot!

I love Shakespeare's works for their power, beauty and truth, and for the never-failing charm of the language's poetry and rhythm. I meant to include some of my favourite Shakespearean speeches, but this post is already far too long, so I will put them in another post.

My Shakespeare at the George bookmark - a souvenir of that first Tempest which has been with me all over the world.

We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is't to leave betimes. Let be. 

 ~

Hamlet V.2.204-8

"Oh, 'tis my picture!" | Working hard at the Pop-Up Globe

Some of the ushers with Stephen Butterworth (Maria in Twelfth Night/Capulet in Romeo and Juliet), via

Selfie time in one of the Lord's Boxes

Where's Wally? The red-coated figure standing at the very back of the crowd, on the left of the entry way, is yours truly, ushering at a very wet and soggy session of Twelfth Night. The audience loved it despite the rain. via

Quiz: How good is your NZ English?

This week on the Oxford Words Blog, this amusing little quiz:

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/04/new-zealand-english-quiz/

Have fun, Hugh :P

(tell me how many you get right and I'll post it in the comments!)

Pop-Up Globe: Run extended (again!)

The performance run at the Pop-Up Globe has been extended for a second time, to Sunday 8th May. Tickets for these extra performances of Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet go on sale tomorrow, Monday 18th April, at 11am.

Let us hope the weather improves... ;)

"For the rain it raineth every day..." (Feste's song, Twelfth Night)

While we wait for the rain to stop, here are some Pop-Up stats, courtesy of the NZ Herald:

• Dates: February 19 - May 8

• Shows: 10 (Pop-Up Globe Theatre Company: Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night; Visiting companies: Hamlet, Antony & Cleopatra, Titus, The Tempest, Henry V, Much Adoe about Nothing, Ugly Othello, Play On)

• Production companies: 9

• Actors: Over 160

• Performances: 128

• Tickets sold: Over 80,000

• School students attended: 20,000

• Guided tours of the theatre: 50

• Professional development workshops: 26

• Flag changes at the Pop-up Globe Theatre: 60

• Specially constructed onion dome roof adornment: 1


Pop-Up Globe Theatre Company

• Cast: 15

• Characters played: 49

• Musicians: 5

• Production team: 32

• Volunteer ushers: 521

• Stage combat tutors: 1

• Litres of stage blood in Romeo & Juliet fights: 47

• Litres of bubble fluid in Twelfth Night special effects: 63

• Bubble machines for Twelfth Night special effects: 17

• Lemons used in lemon tea for actors: 164

• Hours of gig rehearsals: 50

• Approx. audience members flirted with by cast during performances of Romeo & Juliet: 280

• Audience members spattered by stage blood: 105

Source: Patrice Dougan, "Pop Up Globe season extended," New Zealand Herald, accessed April 17th, 2015, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11623996.

Thoughts on Hamlet

Now cracks a noble heart...

Though the Lord Lackbeards' all-female version of Hamlet at the Pop-Up Globe was not my favourite version of the play, there were still many good things about it and much food for thought.

It was (mostly) a swift, clean production - some judicious cutting of the text reduced the play to just under three hours (including a fifteen minute interval). As is often the case, the whole Fortinbras sub-plot was cut, but they kept Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern (famously cut by Olivier in his 1948 film) and the Second Gravedigger, another character who is very often dispatched with. The cast was small, numbering only eight, but some clever doubling meant that I never really noticed this until they took their bows at the end. They did a good job of using the huge stage, relying mainly on the language and movement to fill the space rather than going overboard with props and non-diegetic music - which, after the musical overload of Antony and Cleopatra, was something of a relief and quite refreshing.

The performance dragged a little at the beginning but picked up speed after Act I - they suddenly appeared to realise that actors finishing a scene could exit by one stage door as those beginning the next entered via the opposite side of the stage. Doing this, rather leaving the stage bare between each scene, keeps the action moving along nicely (Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night have both got this down to a fine art). There was a very awkward pause in the action in the middle of the ghost scene - at "Go on, I'll follow thee," Hamlet and the ghost exited the theatre through the groundlings and then took a long while to re-appear! As I was right at the back of the upper gallery, where admittedly the view is not great, perhaps I missed something, but the rest of the audience seemed a bit bemused too.

The actor playing Hamlet, clad appropriately in inky black, looked to be about seven months' pregnant - which, predictably, drew quite a snigger at "How pregnant sometimes his replies are!" As previously mentioned, the doubling was neatly done - Claudius doubled as the ghost, which brought out nicely what Hamlet calls "The counterfeit presentment of two brothers." Horatio doubled as Guildenstern (or was it Rosenkrantz?) - one Hamlet's faithful friend, the other a faithless one. A pipe-smoking, newspaper-reading Polonius who rather stole the show re-appeared (sans pipe and newspaper) after his untimely demise as the priest who buries Ophelia. Since Polonius arguably helps drive Ophelia to madness and death, this seemed fitting too.

One problem with this production was that several of the actors were not very audible. This was probably partly because I was right at the top of the playhouse, in the upper gallery, but also because some of the actors' voices just did not carry as well as men's tend to. Nobody had any trouble hearing Polonius, and Hamlet was fine too, but some of the other characters were less than distinct.

Someone once said that Hamlet is actually a very funny play, and this is to some extent true - especially with Polonius, who in this production drew many a laugh. But, as with Romeo and Juliet, I did feel that the actors and director had chosen to emphasise the comedy at the expense of the tragedy. (One reason I like the production of Twelfth Night so much is that the poignancy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio is well brought out, confronted rather than glossed over. The first time I saw the production it did appear to be played more as a straight comedy, but now they seem to have found a good balance between the comedy and the pathos. At the school matinee yesterday the children seemed especially receptive to this and there was real sympathy for both characters. But I digress.)

The two gravediggers in Act V Scene I made a valiant effort to involve the groundlings during the argument over whether Ophelia drowned herself willingly or not. "Here lies the water," said the Second Gravedigger, pointing at one of the groundlings and gesticulating for her to mime 'water;' "here stands the man," pointing to another. The speech continues, "If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself." Unfortunately it backfired somewhat, because, though the lady mimed water drowning the man with enthusiasm, he just stood there, refusing either to drown himself or to be drowned!

The fencing scene at the end of Act V, which is surely supposed to be the climax of the entire play, seemed oddly tame - possibly because it is not advisable to fence with gusto when one is in the last trimester of pregnancy...? Once everybody had died and then got up again, I did not really like the closing dance - I have read somewhere that this was common practice at the original Globe after all plays, including tragedies, but it just felt wrong for Hamlet... the crowning insult, however, was the stream of bubbles floating down from the playhouse roof to the stage and yard below. Bubbles! For Hamlet!! I think not.

Still, I am glad to have seen the play performed in a space similar to that in which it was originally staged. Although there was a brilliant stage version of Hamlet at the Musgrove theatre a few years ago (and, of course, the recent Benedict Cumberbatch production at the Barbican), it seems to be a play that tends to be filmed more often than staged, meaning that we are often presented with celebrity actors, sweeping vistas of Elsinor and an array of special effects for the ghost. Often - as with the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson film versions (and perhaps also with the Barbican one*) - these become the focus and the play becomes too 'busy,' with the beauty of the language swamped or simply overlooked. (I like Olivier's film because he does not lose the language.) So it was good to see how, on a huge bare stage, the language has to be the driving force behind the play, and - even better - how it is entirely capable of doing so.

Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

* Being in NZ, I could not see this live, but I did see a filmed version of a live performance. From what I heard and read of the production, a huge part of its success (in terms of tickets sold) was the simple fact that Cumberbatch was in it.

What next for the Pop-Up Globe?

The Globe's last performances are on April 24th and the theatre is set to be demolished after that. I for one will be very sorry to see it go! Apparently other people will be too - see

Pop-Up Poll - what should happen to the Globe?

and

Petition to Auckland Council to keep the Globe

And here is an article by the Herald detailing just how much fake blood was spilt during Romeo and Juliet:

Herald | Final curtain due at the Globe

Today's ushering session is Hamlet, performed by the Lord Lackbeards Touring Company with an all-female cast, so that should be interesting... 

via

Telegraph | Shakespeare First Folio discovery

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/07/shakespeare-first-folio-discovered-on-isle-of-bute/

Frontispiece to the First Folio

Antony and Cleopatra

O, Antony!

The Pop-Up Globe continues to sweep all before it with all remaining shows almost completely sold out (groundling tickets are still available though, except for Twelfth Night on Friday 22nd when these tickets are sold out too). So it turns out ushering is not only an economic way to see the plays, but almost the only way...

That said, I probably saw less of yesterday's performance - Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Vanessa Byrnes - than any of the previous ones. It was the first time I had ushered for a performance open to the general public (all the others had been school matinees). Turns out adults need more babysitting than school children... there was a good deal of debate (even dispute) over allocated seats and several people were very late, so I missed most of the play's opening.

Probably because of this, the play seemed quite disjointed and even confusing in places. Also it had been heavily cut (both in length - to just over 2 hours - and in the number of characters), and as the director's programme notes admitted, they had "taken huge liberties with the text; characters are split into two, merged together, introduced as completely new personalites, and completely cut from the text." This did not help my comprehension either, although admittedly my working knowledge of Antony and Cleo is not nearly as good as some of the other plays... Then there was the scene where Octavia confronts Cleopatra. I had no recollection of this being in the play at all and was mighty relieved to read in the programme notes afterwards that this was actually inserted from another play (All For Love [1677], by John Dryden) and that my memory was not quite so sieve-like as I had feared! Throughout the play there was a good deal of music and singing - I suspect intended to hold the text together, but often just vaguely confusing.

As to the cast: Cleopatra was good, and seemed to get better as the play progressed. Antony I felt was not as noble as he should have been, though the director's notes did say that she had chosen to approach the characters "as real people who are flawed and fallible," so maybe this was deliberate. Still... O, Antony! Caesar managed to be both funny and creepy, often at the same time (he also reminded me of Charles Grey's  Blofeld, and once that image had got into my head I couldn't get it out again). Pompey was quite frankly perplexing. He (or rather she, since he was played by a she) and his piratical henchman (Menas and Menacrates) were played with very, very thick Scottish accents, for no reason on earth that I could think of... as Pompey was also dressed in greeny-brown and swathed around the head with loose scarves ("all tentacle-y") the effect reminded me of nothing so much as Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean films!

My photos from this show are very bad, partly because I was busy for much of the time, and partly because I was on the middle gallery again, where the scaffolding is not conducive to good photo-taking. Still, I managed to snatch one of Davy Jones. You will have to imagine the Scottish accent. 

Davy Jones, aka Pompey

Davy Jones almost stole the show (for me anyway), but the best bit was this part (Antony's death; Cleopatra is taking refuge in her 'monument'):

CLEO: ... But come, come, Antony - 

Help me, my women - we must draw thee up.

Assist, good friends.

[...]

[They begin lifting].

The question of how to make this stage business work - just how to 'draw up' Antony to the 'monument' - is a tricky one. Years ago I read somewhere that at the original Globe Cleopatra's 'monument' could have been one of the boxes or balconies above the stage, with the dying Antony somehow hoisted aloft by means of ropes - which sounds both difficult and dangerous. Yesterday at the Pop-Up Globe Cleopatra said her speech from the main stage floor, with Antony 'dying' at her feet in the yard, among the groundlings. This of course meant that at "assist, good friends," there were half-a-dozen groundlings ready and willing to bear a hand, lifting up Antony and rolling him onto the stage!

There are many deaths in the play (basically he dies, she dies, they all die, while poor old Pompey is dispatched by the end of Act III), but after the bloodbath of Romeo and Juliet they seemed a little tame; no fake blood and the 'dead' merely got up and walked off the stage - a lot quicker and easier than having them hauled off, but still, they were supposed to be dead...

Overall - an interesting production; rather hodge-podge, a little perplexing, but (despite the lack of gore) suitably dramatic, and the poetry was as superb as ever:

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tunéd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights 

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pockets.

~

I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.

Radio NZ | Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Song

Radio New Zealand's Saturday Morning programme talks with Paul McLaney, who composed the music for the Pop-Up Globe's Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet, and is also the creator of Play On: A Musical Imagining of the Great Soliloquies:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/201795482/paul-mclaney-shakespeare,-soliloquies-and-song

Radio NZ | Theatre etiquette at the Pop-Up Globe

Radio New Zealand discusses the Pop-Up Globe with Dr. Miles Gregory and the Camelspace scaffolding company that build the theatre:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/201795226/theatre-etiquette-at-the-pop-up-globe

Drama at Romeo and Juliet

Juliet getting into the dramatic swing of things

As if the plot of Romeo and Juliet wasn't dramatic enough already, yesterday's school matinee performance was full of extra drama, starting with a very sick Romeo who very nearly did not make it on stage (he did though, and lasted the whole performance - no mean feat!). Then they got a little over-enthusiastic with the fake blood, which was sprayed not only all over the stage but over a fair proportion of the groundlings too. One boy had his crisp white school shirt covered in it (wonder how he explained that to his mother...). Then another schoolboy, apparently prompted by the gory happenings on stage, went into an epileptic fit and had to be carried away in an ambulance!

Yesterday I was stationed on the middle gallery, which, although safe from spraying blood, is a good deal more restricted in view than the yard or lower gallery:

The view would have been better from the seats (I was standing at the back of the gallery, behind all the seating). They have tried to ensure that the scaffolding doesn't run across in front of the seated sightline, but I still think you get a much better view (and much more involved with the action) from the yard. From the galleries you miss any action that goes on directly underneath (the actors make several entrances and exits through the groundlings in the yard) as well as anything happening directly above you (at one point in the play the Prince speaks from one of the bays in the upper gallery).

The school children yesterday were even more appreciative than those at the performance I saw a few weeks ago. This time, however, the loudest cheers were reserved not for Romeo and Juliet's kiss, but for the entrance of a shirtless Mercutio lusting for blood!

"Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved."