Tom Leonard reports from the experimental stage of Shakespeare's reconstructed theatre
SHAKESPEARE'S Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre that has taken 25 years and £30 million to complete, is due to stage its first performance next week.
The Globe's ensemble theatre company will be hoping to shed new light on how the Bard's plays were originally performed, starting on Wednesday with Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Yesterday, builders were putting the finishing touches to the stage, 200 metres from the original Globe site on the south bank of the Thames in London.
The theatre, the vision of the late American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, has had a chequered history since the foundations were poured in 1987.
Work had to stop for two years in 1989 after the project ran out of money and then continued piecemeal.
The circular building with a thatched roof and an open-air yard was constructed using Elizabethan building materials. They include green oak for the beams, Norfolk reed for the thatch, and ground limestone and goat hair for the plaster.
Its capacity of 1,500, including the "groundlings" standing in the yard, makes it the sixth largest theatre in London. Tickets will cost between £5 and £16.
The design was the result of a collaboration between architects and theatre historians who were able to see only a small part of the original building.
Information about the stage, split into three sections by two pillars and backed by three doors and a balcony, was scant as the original lies undisturbed beneath a listed building near Southwark Bridge.
A permanent oak stage will replace the experimental plywood version in time for next June's opening festival.
The 16-strong cast led by Mark Rylance, the theatre's artistic director, will have to work with no scenery, few props and no stage lights.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona will be the mainstay of the company's month-long "prologue season" before builders take over the theatre again for the winter.
As well as staging little known works by Shakespeare's contemporaries, Mr Rylance plans to commission new works.
A theatre spokesman said the company was expecting teething problems, not least because the plays had not been performed for 400 years in the environment for which they were written.
"The problem with the stage in particular is that we can't categorically say it looked like this," she said.
One actor, George Innes, said: "The biggest challenges for us will be those of projection and clarity. Our language is pretty sloppy in everyday speech nowadays and if you try it up on that stage nobody will understand what you're saying."
Matthew Scarfield, another member of the cast, said: "The first few performances will be about how to use the space without losing the intimacy of the play."
The cast has been able to use the stage for rehearsals only in the evenings because of building work and hourly guided tours.
The theatre will be making up any financial shortfall with profits from the adjoining Globe exhibition, which has had 230,000 visitors since it opened two years ago.
