Sam Wanamaker - is your love's labour lost?
Splendid fellow that he was, Sam Wanamaker laboured long and hard to make a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre come to pass on the South Bank. I will confess to not having visited it as yet, but will do eventually, and I'm glad that it is there.
However, this seems to have passed his compatriots by. A Washington Post writer (or maybe a sub-editor..) headlines "The Earls Court Globe is the first semi-replication of the Shakespearean theater" before going on to report an exhibition in DC's National Building Museum on "Reinventing the Globe: A Shakespearean Theater for the 21st Century", which judging from the NBM's press release is unaware, or cares not for Mr Wanamaker's grand work. Do not be distracted by the word 're-invention', as the release finds time to take in all sorts of historic efforts and the like.
So, pure ignorance, lazy journalism / curatorship or cultural colonisation?
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on Monday, January 15, 2007 at 6:56 pm.
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And isn't it odd how his daughter is so shaggable despite being a bit of a hound?
Peter Hitchens
Aesthete and cultural commentator
Sigh....
PH..now you are thinking in very odd terms. I can honestly say that thought has never crossed my mind!
I think C that this is purely a commercial land grab. Few yanks ever visit (proportionately to population) and so will be unaware of the lie. Instead they will think Amercia has the best; as it does for everything.....
"sigh"
well its true,anyway I cant be sophisticated and erudite 24/7 , sometimes I have to give in to my base insticts.
PH - You might find this opinion item in the Sydney Morning Herald interesting.
The core of his theory is this: "It takes men a while to learn this, but imperfections are where it's at - they are what make a man fall in love".
I'm inclined to agree, and it is Zoe W's nose that makes her interesting and memorable.
That is really dispiriting to work so hard for so long and then be casually passed over like that.
Mr C
I am aware of the phenomena , and agree.
Just wrestling with the Hitchens blog , feeling my way around, how btw do I link to others?
I may even link to Mr mania despite his hug a cameron tendencies.
James - Yes, I hope it was nothing more than ignorance on the part of the DC set. Had Wanamaker lived, he would have been one of the few non-nationals to actually deserve an honourary knighthood. I cannot find any evidence that he was ever honoured by the powers that be - and I'm more than happy to be corrected - but this strikes me as sadly typical.
Peter - I'll e-mail you.
I tend to think such excercises are a distraction from the work. Like the real instrument versions of Mozart. The whole popint is to make it not a museum piece.
I believe that a big part of the Globe idea is that they encourage audience participation - laughing, jeering etc - as theatre goers would have done in the bard's time, rather than sitting in reverent silence, so not really a fair analogy, I think.
There is nothing you can do about the cultural territorial aggression of the Americans. Sam Wanamaker recreated the real Globe, which sounds utterly ghastly for those of us who feel the surging need to kill when someone starts scooping up popcorn by the fistful, but he recreated the genuine item. The Americans will have created a homogenised version.
Texas has a ... hang on with bated breath ... 'Medieval Festival'. Why? I don't know. They have 'knights' in knight costumes as imagined by Texans and they have jousts as imagined by people who have never been to Britain, and they have, I believe, medieval food (yeah. Right). I never went, because it would have been too infuriating.
By contrast, the market town I lived in in France had two medieval days a year, and the costumes were real clothes that have been preserved and are taken out but once a year; there is a man on foot, in genuine costume, who walks ahead of the prince blowing a trumpet and telling everyone to get out of the way because Prince Big is coming through, there is straw on the streets. It is terribly well done (of course; it's French) and really very illuminating. All the costumes are from the time.
It really is a lively and lovely experience. Mr Wanamaker created his genuine theatre. No one can take that away from him. It is not love's labour lost.
Verity -I`m slightly confused are you saying you have been to the Globe on the South Bank? I didn1t know you ever travelled to these shores. An exciting thought that at any time on the tube or in the street I could be face to face with "the " Verity.
C - We are at cross purposes I meant "Museum to symbolise an artistic rigor vitae not the walk in museum experience .
This debate is easier to understand with the real music debate which accepts the original version the piece as the "authentic one" It has large implications for playing Beethoven , on the cusp or Romatic and Classical periods. It should be played without vibrato and therefore very much less variation in volume . It is played instead with a modern warm sound and sounds more “Romantic “. The argument for retaining this development is that it is a living piece of music , we hear Beethoven in the light , or sound, of Wagner.
It is similar with “Real theatres which stand for the primacy of the “Original” experience . People may go and shout as they imagine Elizabethan ruffians did but if this medieval village experience was the point of the still vibrant works then there would be no point at all. For all that it is harmless enough I much prefer an imaginative modern approach to take the plays out of there historical context . To actively seek to distance them from real drama is to kill them.
That’s what I meant
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