Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

"All haile Macbeth, all haile to thee, Thane of Glamis!"

Today the 2pm show was an extremely gory, violent, rude, bawdy, and brilliant production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, performed in the totally packed new Globe Theatre, the faithful reconstruction of the round 1599 open-air playhouse that actor Sam Wanamaker built. About the only thing it didn't have was straw and horse dung in the court yard. If you've seen the movie Shakespeare in Love, you have seen a little of what it's like to see a play as it was done back when. I showed up at the box office around 11:30am, and snagged the last ticket. Cost me £35 and worth every penny. I couldn't have faced the prospect of being a "groundling" and paying a mere £5 to buy one of the 700 tickets available daily if you want to stand in the smoky courtyard for 2 1/2 hours. I also rented a seat cushion for £1, so that I could sit in relative comfort on the wooden benches. The groundlings could make use of the black cover, with headholes cut into the fabric, if they really wanted the full-on Elizabethan experience of murder and mayhem on stage. Today wasn't as hot as the past 3 days, but it still got a bit toasty out there in the courtyard as the sun changed its position. Pigeons flapped about on the thatched roof, smoke from the stage braziers drifted about, and musicians playing bleating bagpipes, flutes and skin drums, mixed in the audience, along with the bloodied actors playing dead soldiers with flayed bodies or malevolent spirits writhing in hell. And the three witches were hideously evil. The actor who played MacBeth is Elliot Cowan, and he was terrific, as were all the members of the cast. Everyone seemed to have their hands caked to the elbows in gore, and wielded bloody swords and axes, and as for Lady Macbeth's using her white satin gown as a hand towel, well, just imagine. The guy who played Malcolm spoke with a strong Scottish accent. Later I saw him in the lobby being mobbed by teenage girls. He seems familiar. In fact, I think he's played Doctor Who at some point.

Had I been up for it, besides the very classy selection of posters, woodcut cards and facsimiles of Shakespeare's plays, I could also have bought a couple of original C16th plays in the gift shop. A local antiquarian bookseller was offering them for a mere £2500 or so. I settled for a few postcards.

The show was truly amazing. I'm tempted to go back and see it again.