CityLife

Go-ahead Globe parks centre stage

OUTDOOR MAGIC: Globe's Comedy Of Errors

AFTER their successful run with Romeo and Juliet last year – the first time the world-famous Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Company had performed in Manchester – the troupe company returns from Tuesday with a week of performances of the Bard’s The Comedy Of Errors.

But when I speak to their artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole, the first thing he is anxious to do is to heap praise on others.

He saluted the head of our own Caroline Clegg, whose M.E.N. Theatre Award-winning Feelgood Theatre Company has, he says ‘done wonderful work’ in opening local people’s eyes to the possibilities of open-air theatre in Heaton Park.

Touring open-air versions of their own shows was, he says, ‘always part of the game-plan’ for the Globe Theatre Company.

“It’s an exciting and organic part of what we do here and feels like a return to that wonderful tradition of the strolling players, who would just turn up in your town square or some similar space.”

Dromgoole’s excitement at the very idea of live theatre is palpable and infectious.

Of the Globe, dismissed by many as just a tourist gimmick, he enthuses: “Just to be close to it is a thrill.”

The Comedy Of Errors is, he feels, ‘just very theatrical’.

“There’s an improbable level of coincidence, of course, but the play is just such an exuberant rush of energy and full of such wonderful writing that it defies anyone to not feel the sheer joy of theatre,” he says. “That’s what I think anyway.”

In fact, you get the distinct impression that what Dominic thinks matters a lot more to him than what critics, almost without exception, think of his productions.

“I wish we lived in a critic-free environment,” he recklessly observes.

“The ideal writer for critics is Harold Pinter, that kind of closed-in world that critics feel safe in ‘exploring’, one of the words they’re keen on using. In contrast to that you’ve got Shakespeare, who’s wide-open and that’s the reason his plays can survive endless different versions.”

Open-air

He is, it’s fair to say, a big fan of the Bard. But even he concedes that part of the unique attraction of peforming in the open-air is that ‘however good the play might be, it’s never going to be 100 one-hundred per cent about that, as it would be in a traditional theatre’.

“You just have a much broader experience. It’s an event and everything around you becomes part of that event.”

Of his day-job at the Globe, he’s just as bullish.

“Everyone thought it would be a disaster,” he says. “They thought no one would want to stand, no one would want to sit on those benches.”

The restaurant and the exhibition exploring Shakespeare’s life were, he says, expected to ‘subsidise this gaping hole in the centre’. 

Instead, the amphitheatre became the Globe’s biggest draw. Given the chance to stand in one of Europe’s most atmospheric theatres, audiences came in their droves, with 5.5 million tickets sold last year. 

“People say it’s a tourist place,” says Dromgoole. “But our audience is about 20 per cent overseas tourists, 50 per cent Londoners, with 30 per cent from elsewhere in the UK.

“The whole idea that one group of people sit in the dark and another in the light is mad. The fact that this place defies those norms is challenging to lots of people.

“Not challenging to the audience ,” he clarifies, “but challenging to the critics – some of whom find this place terribly hard to deal with.

“You have to tell big stories at the Globe. You can’t put on the well-fashioned miniature.”

The Globe’s The Comedy Of Errors is in Heaton Park from Tuesday, June 23 until Sunday, June 28, with matinee performances on Wednesday, June 24 and Saturday, June 27.