Tucked between undistinguished office blocks, and out of proportion with the buildings around it, the sudden appearance of the Globe Theatre as you walk along London's Bankside is both unexpected and welcome. Although much of the reconstruction of the circular building, with its thatched roof and open-air yard, was a matter of learned conjecture, there is something sensible about its size and shape, a reassuring roundness that suggests both enclosure and inclusion. The original Globe, opened in 1599, burned down in 1613 and was rebuilt immediately. Since it was closed by Puritans in 1642 for its perceived threat to the morals of theatre-going Londoners, its original form and ground-plan have become shrouded in mystery and the source of an ongoing, and occasionally rancorous, debate.
The Shakespeare Globe Trust was set up in 1970 by the producer, director and actor Sam Wanamaker, with a view to rebuilding the Globe Theatre. Wanamaker did not live to see his dream realised, dying in 1993. He did, however, see building start on what is today not only one of London's most popular theatres, but an internationally renowned resource centre for study of Shakespeare. The artistic director of the Globe Theatre (indeed, its only artistic director to date) is Mark Rylance.
Born in England, Rylance moved to the US as a child only to return to train as an actor at RADA in London. Well known for his Shakespearean work, including his accomplished, and for some definitive, Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1989, he has also played the lead in a number of television plays, including The Grass Arena and the A.S. Byatt-scripted film, Angels and Insects. At the Globe, Rylance has played Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the title role in Henry V and, donning a dress and makeup, the part of Cleopatra. In this year's season, he taking the role of Hamlet, one of the most difficult and, some argue, rewarding parts for an actor.
Despite disparaging and, occasionally, personal remarks from a sceptical section of the press when Rylance first took the job as artistic director of the Globe, he has brought the theatre not only to critical acclaim but to financial stability. The original criticism included hand-wringing over whether audiences would be prepared to stand in an open-air theatre for three hours - they were - and accusations that the Globe Theatre, if it failed to bring in audiences, would turn into an exercise in attracting US dollars into a Disneyfied "Shakespeare Experience".
Despite this early criticism and after only three years of box-office receipts, the theatre (which receives no state subsidy) not only pays its way but contributes to the capital costs of other, associated projects, including the development of the Inigo Jones Theatre. I ask Rylance if he feels he has sufficiently answered the Globe's critics. Rylance pauses over my question and considers it for a few moments as he gazes out of his office towards St Paul's Cathedral and the City. He is a young-looking man with a certain boyish charm that almost, but not quite, masks the absolute seriousness of his belief in the social and intellectual worth of performing and directing Shakespeare. After careful reflection he turns back to me and smiles broadly before answering. "I realised when I took this job that I was going to have to steer a course between the Scylla of scholarship and academia and the Charybdis of a tourist centre. You have to find a way through these two pillars because they are the supporting aspects of the project."
There is, of course, a middle way too, which involves what Rylance suggests is the defining feature of British theatre - namely humanism, and the need to constantly consider human drama through plays such as Hamlet. "For the Globe to rightly uphold its seat in an international context," Rylance explains, "it has to have a humanism to its playing and that is something we are still growing into." An essential part of this demand means that the Globe, unlike most theatres, makes do without the props of lighting and scenery changes. Which is not, however, an undertaking to regain some affected notion of authenticity: rather, it is an attempt to set a challenge for the actor, director and audience alike. Returning to his theme of human drama, Rylance suggests an image of the Globe as a communicative tool which can be used to generate an "emotional energy" between the actors and audience.
To get a fuller sense of what he means by this, you only have to stand on the stage of the Globe, which is not only disconcertingly small but also vertiginously close to the audience. Standing on the far right-hand edge of the stage you could almost reach out and touch the audience in the seats above. Below, as Rylance demonstrates for me, you have an audience that leans on the stage making comments as you act and, in the case of the occasional child, throwing the odd sweet in your direction. This all seems part of his artistic vision insofar as it maintains a contact with the audience that is often lost in the pyrotechnics of much contemporary drama in the city's West End . He expresses pleasure at the fact that new, younger directors have came forward who are willing to let go of the props of sets and lighting and work primarily with actors, music and an audience. The Globe is, he says, a "big, open cauldron of a theatre" which facilitates this kind of relationship and development; everyone, from the groundlings up, is involved in the play. And this, for Rylance, is how it should be: a cross between a theatre and a sports arena where emotions run high not only on-stage but offstage.
Packed with references to the Globe, its "heavens" and the groundlings, Hamlet tells us more about Shakespeare's views on acting and the role of theatre in society than any of his other plays - which is one of the reasons Rylance has decided to perform it again. He explains, however, that the difficulty involved in performing Hamlet once more is that it is such a famous play. "You have to attempt to take the audience through the story as if they, like Hamlet, are encountering it for the first time. And it is definitely not something you get better at if you play it over and over again."
And therein lies the rub: if, on a bright, lazy summer s evening in mid-August, with a tent of glorious blue sky above, you can make Hamlet appear the most tragic of dramas, without the aid of a single strobelight or a dry-air machine, then you've cracked it.
The Globe may look a little awkward in its surroundings, but there can no doubt that this is where it should be - in the heart of London, where Shakespeare wrote and performed. And there is no doubt either that it is able to hold its own, not only in respect of the buildings that hem it in, but the challenge set by Shakespeare when he wrote his plays more than 400 years ago. It is in this context that the Globe appears to represent not so much the discontinuities of history and time as the continuities; a reminder to us of the need to continually address the inter-relationships between people and the subject of humanity in all its glories and failings - as Shakespeare himself undertook to do - for fear that we should take those relationships for granted. As a parting shot, Rylance suggests that the Globe Theatre is here to serve our time, as much as it was used to serve Shakespeare's time. "Our task," he adds, "is to reflect and resound our lives now. For us, that is the point of the Globe."
The Globe Theatre's 2000 Season runs from May 12th to September 24th and will include The Tempest, with Vanessa Redgrave in the lead role, and Hamlet with Mark Rylance in the title role. The box office can be contacted on 004420-74019919 or 00044-20-73164703. Tours of the Globe Theatre run every 15 minutes. An extensive education department organises a variety of workshops, seminars and events. For further information: 0044-2079021433.
www.shakespeares-globe.org