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.