Global glory

THE rising reputation of Shakespeare’s open-air The Globe, in London, means that its non-Arts Council funded touring is going to be severely tested over the next two years. Next week a new production of Hamlet arrives at Richmond’s Georgian Theatre Royal and As You Like It follows during the week of August 30-September 3, but can this level of visits continue when The Globe has announced ambitious plans to stage a Shakespeare Festival next year and started work on a £7m indoor Jacobean venue?

Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole says: “We started this touring strand of what we do about four years ago and we really didn’t know what it was going to turn out into. Now, it’s a big and important part of what we do and we arrange two 16-week tours all over the UK and Europe.

The difficult thing is that The Globe gets no subsidy and nothing to help with touring, so it all has to be self-financing.”

That means, on the road, each tour has to find £17,000 to £18,000 a week.

“But we want to do it well and we want to make it work because there is a demand for it. It’s a shame because the Royal Shakespeare Company don’t tour as extensively as they used to. There used to be a lot more Shakespeare touring than now, although there is a certain sort of intellectual and artistic freedom by not being beholden to funding or subsidy. I’m proud we’ve made it work on the back of ticket sales,” he says.

So will The Globe be back next year or will the organisation be focusing on Olympic celebrations?

“We’re doing this incredible festival at the beginning of the year where we’re doing all the plays of Shakespeare, all 36, in different languages by six overseas companies in six weeks. So that will be quite a story. But we are determined to keep the touring circuit alive in some way.

There are lots of audiences who have made us part of their summer and it would be a great shame to disappoint them,” Dromgoole responds.

Besides Hamlet, As You Like It, All’s Well That End’s Well and Much Ado are also opening in London or on tour and, recently, 20 actors read the entire King James’ edition Bible to celebrate the 400th anniversary.

“We aim to build the Jacobean theatre next door by 2013 and that will be a thrilling addition because that will give us the ability to play throughout the winter,” he says.

Touring provides its own challenges for The Globe. It’s company has just returned from Austria and “a rather bizarre and rather wonderful arts festival just outside Vienna. We’ve been going there for about four years and we do have to make a physical change because the venue is huge. It’s a massive old stable linked to a 17th Century palace, which is beyond belief big and very, very clattery acoustically and a big end on staging with around 700 people.

“Then, we come to Richmond and Newby Hall. Richmond is a little jewel of a theatre, but it’s like putting on a show in someone’s front room in comparison.

That’s delightful and the actors will be thrilled to get that intimacy. At Newby the open air is a whole different collection of things to be achieved.

“Richmond is a complete one-off.

There’s nothing else quite like it anywhere and it’s very well suited to the way we do Shakespeare,” says Dromgoole.

So what changes did the production have to make between Austria and North Yorkshire?

“We have to have a set that is adjustable, but it is a question mainly of pitch and tone. Everything about The Globe is communicating with the audience and there is a difference to 210 in Richmond and 700 in Austria, who seemed to be miles away. You’ve got to try and resist shouting and, instead, speak purposefully and be finer and more delicate in the smaller venue,” he explains.

The Globe’s Hamlet is “pretty much the whole package, but it is a cut version and probably runs for two hours and 45 minutes.

That’s quick and we probably get that by playing it fast, but we include everything.

“I used a kind of conflation of several different texts because in Hamlet there’s a folio plus two quartos and the first quarto is very clearly written for a touring production.

So you can use some of the bridges and jumps that are in there to make the scenes more fleet of foot... otherwise the play would run nearer to fourand- a-half hours.”

• Hamlet tour dates: Tuesday-Saturday, June 4, Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, Tickets: £12-£25. Box Office: 01748-825252. georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk

• August 2-3, Newby Hall, Ripon, Yorkshire, Tickets: Adult £17.50 and £12.50 concession (under 16s and OAPS). Party of ten or more, one free ticket. 01423-322583 newbyhallandgardens.com

• As You Like It tour: August 30- September 3, Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond.