In Defense of The Rolled R Crowd

All the years I lived in Chicago I never once went to the top of the Sears tower. I went into the Sears tower, sure -- I was quite fond of Mrs. Levy's Deli -- just never up to the observation decks. But some things are touristy for a good reason. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's bad. Life in London has made this obvious, repeatedly. Some places are worth going to even though other people also want to go there.

I finally went to see a show at the Globe two summers ago, Much Ado About Nothing. Yes, period costumes and all. Well, it was wonderful (Eve Best's Beatrice especially brilliant).

Neil Steinberg's recent column on a Goodman production of Measure for Measure praises Robert Falls while taking a bit of a swipe at this sort of thing in describing Falls' "lifelong rescue of Shakespeare from the rolled R crowd, returning it the alive thing it was meant to be".

I admit that there should be few theatre-going experiences that feel more contrived than attending a period production in a handbuilt elizabethan replica. Should have been, but wasn't.

It was cool and rainy, as it often is in London in summer. The actors were getting rained on. The yard was getting rained on. Some of the lines became unintentionally ironic, which didn't escape the notice of either the performers or the crowd. The groundlings got some well-deserved attention throughout. A favourite moment: Eve Best delivered a soliloquy kneeling at the edge of the stage, clutching the hand of a woman in the front row. The rain started coming down a bit more heavily. Without breaking character or missing a beat, she reached behind the woman's head and gently pulled her jacket hood up, smoothing it as a big sister would. It pulled the crowd in, enraptured. The whole play became a shared experience, both funnier and more intimate than I ever would have expected.

I like the escapism of theatre and genuinely prefer period versions of period pieces to modern retellings. Being in London in the rain in the Globe... I found the commonality of the experience across the hundreds of years not static and dead but reassuring and life-affirming. Talented actors performing good theatre is always an "alive thing".