Gabriel - Shakespeare's Globe

On Saturday 20^th July at 2pm, I went to see Gabriel at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was billed as ‘An entertainment with trumpet’ and that’s exactly what it was. It was entertaining. There were trumpets.

Gabriel is a new play, which came about because the trumpeter Alison Balsom wanted to play at the Globe. Or that’s what I read in the programme, anyway. The play featured a cast of Globe actors (most of the same cast as were in The Tempest) alongside musicians from the English Concert, and music was very much at the heart of the piece.

The play was structured as a series of miniature stories from the period when William and Mary were on the throne and Purcell was writing music for the trumpet. While the cast brought all the characters vividly to life, I did feel that it could have done with something apart from the music to pull the stories together.

I’ve seen ‘compilation’ shows like this before (The Pantaloons’ Canterbury Tales and Grimm Fairy Tales spring to mind), and these sort of pieces seem to work better if the audience is given a clear reason for the bitty structure. Why are we hopping from one tale to the next? Why should I care about these new characters? What has this tale got to do with the last one?

But despite this little niggle, Gabriel really was very enjoyable. The bawdy humour was fun. I loved the ‘true stories’ told by the waterman (Sam Cox) in the first half and enjoyed the acting lesson given by Kate (Jessie Buckley) in the second half. The reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was nicely done, and I did giggle at the cardboard cut-out London landmarks being run across the stage to signify a boat’s progress along the Thames.

And the music was beautiful. It was all so evocatively played and sung that it seemed to bring a real stillness to the Globe. When, near the end, the actors shared out and passed sheets of music around the stage, it was a wonderful symbol of the sense of sharing that comes from experiencing music and theatre in a space like the Globe.

We went to the Talking Theatre afterwards, which featured Jessie Buckley and Richard Riddell from the cast, and which was almost as entertaining as the play itself. The talk started as a formal question and answer session, where the cast members spoke (amongst other things) about the unique experience of performing at the Globe, and how theatre is all about ‘sharing stories’.

And then somehow this sense of sharing seemed to spread out amongst the audience, and stories were shared amongst the Talking Theatre group. We heard from a lady who’s been to see this year's production of The Tempest 12 times, from a young boy who’s learning to play the trumpet, and from an 84 year old lady who has been going to the Globe as a ‘groundling’ since 1997. She’s giving a talk at her local WI about her Globe experiences, apparently. I kind of want to go.

So my experience of going to see Gabriel ended on a communal sort of note, with the audience just as important as the cast in making the afternoon what it was. Sharing stories. I like that.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

This was something of an enlightening read for me – for two main reasons. I’ve never read a graphic novel before. And I know next to nothing about the culture and history of Iran.

So Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi was educational on both counts.

First off, let’s deal with the graphic novel thing. Being a literature sort of person, I’d probably been guilty of an unconscious snootiness regarding graphic novels. Having read comic books as a kid (mainly Asterix and Tintin – sometimes in the original French as my dad thought this would help us learn the language!), I associated the form with light-hearted fiction for children.

Nothing wrong with light-hearted fiction for children – I read quite a lot of children’s books – but I think I may have been a bit suspicious of the comic-style form being used for adults. I certainly didn’t approach Persepolis expecting to be challenged by it intellectually.

But I was challenged by it. Not in terms of the words or syntax used, but by the ideas expressed and the themes explored. This is not a light-hearted ‘comic’. It graphically depicts violence, murder and suicide. The characters swear. They talk about sex, politics, religion. And through the words and pictures that Marjane Satrapi uses to tell her story, we are guided through a turbulent time in Iran’s history.

Persepolis is autobiographical, and through seeing how our main character’s life changes, we are given a glimpse into the political and religious upheavals in Iran in the late 20^th century. It’s pretty hard going sometimes. Some moments are powerfully moving and some are ideologically challenging.

I know very little about Iran’s history, and of its culture I only really know what I see on the TV news or what I’ve read about in books like Reading Lolita in Tehran. Most of what I know is about the oppression of women. And while this is undeniably a big deal in Persepolis, it’s made clear that it’s all part of a larger tapestry.

So this book opened a window. I learnt something about the revolution and the unrest that came before and after it. I couldn’t help reflecting on the situation in Egypt at the moment as I read it. I also learnt a bit about Iran’s war with Iraq (I was just about being born when this was actually happening), and it made me wonder about all the subsequent conflicts in and around the area.

What struck me most was how complicated it all is. The drawings in this book may all be in black and white, but the narrative itself doesn’t fall into black and white morality. I think I’ve come away from reading Persepolis feeling even more confused about Iran as a country. But then, perhaps that’s what happens when you have a little more knowledge. It’s easier to be certain when you’re ignorant.

So there are books that come and go and don’t leave much impression, and there are books that leave you thinking. I know that next time Iran is mentioned on the news I’ll be thinking about this book. And I know that next time someone recommends a graphic novel to me, I won’t be so slow to read it. Persepolis has left me just that little bit more knowledgeable, and just that little bit more open-minded.

Always good things for a book to do.

The Tempest - Shakespeare's Globe

I love the Globe. £5 to see a production like The Tempest is a complete bargain.

With a sold-out auditorium, the sun shining and a sense of summertime in the air, Saturday 29^th June was a brilliant afternoon to go to Shakespeare’s Globe. I was in a good mood before I went in, I laughed a lot during the performance, and the just-under-three-hour running time flew by without my feet aching at all.

I don’t exactly know where to begin with writing about this production, because it just hung together so beautifully as a whole. It almost seems a shame to pull out any particular bits. There wasn’t a single weak link in the cast and the mixture of humour and poignancy was perfectly balanced.

I’m not sure I’ve seen a production of The Tempest that was this funny before. Right from the start – where the actor playing Trinculo (Trevor Fox) came on to remind people to turn their mobile phones off and told us that the afternoon’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be starting shortly – a teasing, light-hearted tone was set. And this carried on throughout the afternoon. Even Miranda and Ferdinand – characters who can often be a bit insipid – were laugh-out-loud funny as played by Jessie Buckley and Joshua James in this production.

But then there were moving moments too: the final speech by Prospero (Roger Allam); the halting way Ariel (Colin Morgan) asked if Prospero loved him; the petals falling from the rafters during the wedding masque. I actually saw people picking up some of these tissue paper petals and taking them home as souvenirs.

The music, too, was really effective in conjuring that idea of an isle full of noises (a description familiar to everyone now as part of the Olympics ceremony speech). From the unaccompanied singing in parts to the way music came from unidentified parts of the auditorium – even to the noisy aircraft flying overhead – it all contributed to the feeling that the language being spoken by the human characters was overlaid on top of this ‘natural’ state and was almost usurping the place of music on the island.

That reading would certainly fit the rest of the plot, which is largely concerned with usurping in one form or another. I’m trying to resist going into a deeper analysis of the text of The Tempest (postcolonialism, language, the place of magic – all that kind of stuff). But I will just say that the major themes I took away from this particular production were all to do with power and redemption.

A few other bits of flotsam and jetsam before I finish: the model ship ‘sailing’ over the audience at the beginning really reminded me of Bristol Old Vic’s production of Swallows and Amazons a year or so ago; Sam Cox’s Stephano reminded our group variously of Bill Nighy and John Cleese in his mannerisms and silly walks; and – as someone said of Jessie Buckley’s post I'd Do Anything career as the audience traipsed out of the Globe at the end – ‘well, that was better than Oliver’!

To me, watching The Tempest felt like watching a production from Mark Rylance’s heyday at this theatre. Especially with the jig at the end. It never feels like a proper Globe production unless there’s a jig at the end.