Well, the summer’s coming to an end, but there’s still time
for a few more trips to the Globe yet. We’ve done some Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing), and now we’ve started on the non-Shakespeare.
First up, The Heresy
of Love by Helen Edmundson. I saw this at Shakespeare’s Globe on its last
performance (Saturday 5th September 2015).
Following Blue Stockings a couple of
years ago, this is another play about the plight of intelligent women in a
world run by men. It shares themes with this season’s Merchant of Venice too, dealing as it does with the more oppressive
aspects of religion.
I found The Heresy of
Love an interesting play because of its constant sense of deferral or
displacement of the truth. You were never sure who was being honest with whom
or about what. And while most of the characters seemed to be in the wrong at
one point or another, none of them was ever really presented as being in the
right. No straightforward goodies and baddies here – just lots of people, each
with their own conflicting motivations.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure the Globe was the ideal setting
for this play. It’s difficult to conjure a sense of claustrophobia or being shut
in or trapped when there’s a wide open roof and sky above you. But perhaps that
would have been better at an evening performance (I saw a matinee).
It was a thought-provoking play, though. And very moving at
the end. Not a play that gives you any easy answers.
On a sort-of related note, the playwright Helen Edmundson
also wrote the musical adaptation of Swallows
and Amazons with Neil Hannon, which is one of my favourite things I’ve ever
seen at the theatre. Just wanted to give it a mention…
