The Tempest at the Globe

On Sunday 11^th August the folks and I went to see the Tempest at the Globe. Now usually I can’t speak highly enough of the Globe, it has such a high standard of performances, and I’ve seen some amazing plays there. All this made Sunday’s performance very disappointing. The actor playing Sebastian came on at the beginning, and told us that Colin Morgan who was playing Ariel was sick. Now I’ve never watched Merlin on the Beeb, but it’s obviously quite popular, and there were a lot of youngsters who I think had turned up to see him. The actor then joked and asked whether anyone knew the part of Ariel, and that Matthew Raymond would be reading the part. Reading was the key word there. The play started well, but in the first scene involving Ariel all became clear. The ‘understudy’ came plodding on clutching the script, and read the lines out. There was no acting involved. Roger Allam tried to make light of the situation by pretending to check his line over Ariel’s shoulder, but all in all it was very awkward. I just felt embarrassed and bad for the stand in actor, and it was not comfortable. I was so glad that we’d had a long lunch with plenty of wine. Having an actor on stage reading from a script just destroys all the magic of the performance, and it was ironic that it was the part of Ariel that’s meant to have the most magic.

The worst (or most hilarious) part came at the end, when a young chap appeared on stage shaking and clutching a small piece of paper, and then read out from it. It was like watching a school performance; we were all willing him to get through his speech. I have no idea what he said, I was on the edge of my seat hoping he’d be okay (and trying not to giggle).

 I read the reviews of the play afterwards online, and we obviously missed out big time. It’s rated highly and is described as ‘magical’ and ‘enchanting’. I don’t think the play itself helped, I found it clunky, and drawn out, but having scripts on stage definitely broke the allusion of the play. I’ve bought the dvd of the Tempest by Julie Taymor, so I’m going to give that a watch, and see how I feel after that. I do hope the Globe change their policy of no understudies though (apparently it’s due to funding) as I really don’t ever want to see that again!

 Interestingly my parents were going to see a play at the Donmar last Saturday, but one of the actors was ill. The Donmar phoned to let them know the performance was cancelled, and they would be getting a refund. So is it better to struggle on through the Tempest, or to admit defeat and cancel? Personally, I prefer the latter.