The Globe’s glorious, golden night
you can see why the authorities at the Globe wanted to put a stop to the high jinks in their Shakespearean monastery by allowing their famously charismatic artistic director emma Rice to step down next year. Her style of theatre, exemplified by this joyous revival of her 2003 mock epic based on the Celtic legend, opens the way for ribaldry, heresy and all manner of frivolity. it flaunts the very things that set the Globe’s board on edge — electronic sound and lighting — in an adoring parody of the ancient tale of the doomed love of the French knight and the irish princess. Produced with the Cornish theatre company Kneehigh, it’s a playful, organic performance rooted in traditional english rusticity with a nerdish chorus in specs, balaclavas and cagoules.
The tone is frequently that of a karaoke with Sting’s every Breath you Take and daft Punk’s Get Lucky. But the really big moments at the very end are secured by an amped-up, spinetingling blast of Wagner’s most ravishing Liebestod from his operatic version of the story, Tristan und isolde.
This is not a language- driven show and has little to say about Shakespeare. Which is not to say the Bard wouldn’t have been thrilled by Bill Mitchell’s design using a trapeze and neon lighting for a saucy cabaret atmosphere.
i was enchanted and amused by dominic Marsh making a crooning, kickboxing Tristan, and by Hannah Vassallo making a feisty yseult, bouncing about the stage like a rubber ball.
niall ashdown adds extra laughs as an irish lady- in- waiting and Mike Shepherd provides a thoughtful centre to the story as the Cornish king.
it may send up the story, and make a travesty of the Globe’s mission of setting the clocks back 400 years, but i loved it for doing so.