Shakespeare's Globe - 2006 Preview
Feature by Oli Burley
WHAT a buzz it is that Dominic Dromgoole has decided to show some guts in his first year as artistic director at The Globe.
With his succession of Mark Rylance still in its infancy, Dromgoole has opted for a programme that promises to be bold, biting and bloody.
The Edges of Rome season will no doubt test audiences’ limits just as William Shakespeare probed the boundaries for his future tragedies in Titus Andronicus.
This play of violent revenge, often sensational, embodies many of the themes that will transfix ranks of groundlings this summer: war, chaos and political tension.
Telling the story of Titus, a nobleman roused to action, it portrays Imperial Rome at a point in crisis where corruption and barbarity undermine leadership.
The city “is but a wilderness of tigers”, Titus tells his son Lucius, at once beautifully capturing the desolate impact of civilisation’s collapse and its subsequent predatory threat.
Shakespeare traces the sources of this chaos back to the days of the Roman Republic in his later plays Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.
In both the destabilising influence of conflict and politics is brought to life by the inability of the warrior hero to make the transition back to civilised society.
For Antony, this takes the form of abdication of responsibility; his indulgent ties to Cleopatra distil his own credibility and Rome’s wider influence.
For Caius Martius Coriolanus, the problem is rather one of self-definition. He “is to Rome as is the osprey to the fish”, fighting to impose himself on the early Republic.
Dromgoole himself directs both these plays, employing Jacobean staging for Coriolanus, while Lucy Bailey oversees an Elizabethan version of Titus.
For chaos of a lighter hue, though, do not miss Chris Luscombe’s telling of The Comedy of Errors, especially if you are better with faces than names.
With a cast list that includes twin brothers (both called Antipholus) and twin servants (both called Dromio), this often-neglected work is a masterpiece of contortion.
As if this quartet of plays is not enough, the season is given an added twist by the inclusion of two new pieces: In Extremis, by Howard Brenton, and Simon Bent’s Under the Black Flag.
The former, set in 12th century France, tells the love story of Abelard and Heloise, while the latter is described as “a rampaging yarn around the 17th-century pirate world”.
Naturally, we are advised that Bent’s offering comes with bare flesh and filthy language – aspects that one suspects slot quite neatly into Dromgoole’s potent plans.
“It is a year of thrilling new beginnings,” the artistic director is not shy of declaring, but only time will tell if he ends up, as Antony did, offending reputation.
Booking for the 2006 Theatre Season is now open.