No more marriages

Royal Wedding day came, it didn’t rain, and everyone had a good time. We watched it on tv. The best moment was when the Lancaster, the Spitfire and the Hurricane flew over; we could hear it through our windows, the beautiful bass throb of the engines sounding like the love-child of a Harley-Davidson and the Death Star.

What better way to celebrate a wedding than to attend a performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre? We crossed the Thames over Tower Bridge, full of footsore soldiers from the Westminster frontline bearing their Union Jacks and looking totally knackered from having stood up since the early morning and walked all the way back. (The Circle and District Lines, which service Westminster and Tower Hill, have been closed for ‘planned engineering works’ over the long weekend. Morons.)

Our seats at the Globe were on the second tier facing the stage. We rented cushions so that we wouldn’t get sore backsides. Didn’t work. Those benches are tough, with no backs, which is bad news because my back has been playing up for a week. There isn’t much room, but it’s still much more comfortable than the Théâtre du Champs Elysees.

The stage looks just like the ‘wooden o’ I always imagined. No curtain, with costumes and props hung at the back of the stage. Just before 7.30 the bells were rung and the actors came out on stage, putting on costumes, chatting with each other, having a word with the groundlings.

It was still daylight when it started, but the stage was lit. The lighting was unobtrusive, illuminating the whole stage rather than individuals or for effect. And the audience was also lit; we could all see and be seen..

Eight people played all the roles, doubling up on minor roles, providing the music (violin, lute, recorder, drum) and dancing. Two stage hands helped at other times.

Joshua McGuire (Hamlet) is short and slightly built – looking adolescent rather than a young man – and has a RADA accent, which could have been unfortunate. But he has the intensity to carry the role. Jade Anouka was compelling in Ophelia’s mad scene, and Simon Armstrong was equally impressive as Claudius and his brother the slain king.

They played the jokes as jokes, not as arch comments, and this made the play very funny at times, for example when Polonius gives his advice to Laertes. John Bett’s Polonius had a Scottish accent, and his delivery made him as funny as he reads.

And Hamlet’s ‘We will have no more marriages’ will probably never get as big a laugh as it did the night of William and Kate’s wedding.