When I asked the kids to return to The Globe last night to see one of Shakespeare’s plays, “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” I was worried.
The play is nearly two and a half hours, and it’s Shakespeare. The language is more than 400 years old and sometimes difficult for even me to follow. Also, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is one of Shakespeare’s least frequently performed plays and one I only knew a little bit about, so it wasn’t going to feature classic moments that the kids might recognize from plays like “Romeo and Juliet,” “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” or “Hamlet.”
The theater was also recreated in the original state of The Globe, meaning the space was open-air, the seats were simple, narrow benches, and there was no sound system. Also, no lighting or special effects of any kind.
Just a bunch of actors performing complex language on a simple, wooden stage.
Not exactly what they are accustomed to when seeing a show.
Still, they agreed to go.
Actually, when I went to ask them if they wouldn’t mind seeing a show, Clara interrupted and said, “We already know. Mom texted us. We’ll go.”
Apparently, Elysha had been quietly setting the groundwork for me.
So I returned to The Globe last night with trepidation. During dinner, I read a summary of the play to the family to help them follow the show, and I made sure to spend the extra money on cushions for the seats and pre-ordered snacks during the interval (the UK word for “intermission”).
When the interval arrived after almost 90 minutes, I turned to Charlie, held my breath, and said, “So? What do you think?”
I knew Clara was enjoying the show because she was laughing a lot, but I wasn’t so sure about Charlie, who had been sitting beside Elysha.
“Love it,” he said. “It’s really great, Dad.”
“Really?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s hilarious.”
And it was. The last scene before the interval was especially funny.
After the kids went off to find our snacks, Elysha told me that midway through the first half, Charlie had leaned into her and said, “I didn’t know Shakespeare was like this.”
As the show came to an end and the cast danced a jig, which is how they end every performance at The Globe, Charlie looked at me and said, “Top five show ever, Dad. Thanks so much for bringing us.”
Elysha and Clara loved it, too.
Later, as we were exiting the theater, Charlie said, “I know it was more than two hours long, but honestly, it felt like an hour. Maybe even less. We should see another Shakespeare play soon.”
Seeing Shakespeare performed at The Globe was incredible. What I found most remarkable was how well we were transported back in time for an evening. The way we saw that show was so similar to the way audiences watched Shakespeare 400 years ago. Other than the addition of the seat cushions, the emergency exits, the modern restrooms, and the lighting, which allowed it to be performed at night, this was exactly how Shakespeare was performed in London back then.
The Globe is an accurate reproduction of the original theater, so what we saw, and how we saw it, is what Londoners witnessed centuries ago.
Incredible.
Thank you, Sam Wannamaker, the American actor who first envisioned rebuilding The Globe and made it happen 30 years ago.
Also, the show was fantastic. The story, the performances, the singing and dancing… all elevated an obscure Shakespearean production to great and unexpected heights.
Seeing Shakespeare performed in The Globe was truly a dream come true for me. Another tear-inducing moment on this wonderful vacation in London, and a moment I will never forget.
But even better was listening to my children rave about the show.
My teenage children loved it.
My fourteen-year-old son loved it.
I couldn’t believe it.
It took me a long, long time to see Shakespeare performed onstage, and when it finally happened, it was all my own doing.
I fell in love with the plays in high school. I hunted down copies of the plays in bookshops for years. I read them absent quietly, any fellow readers or fans, since I knew none. Then I went to Boston to see Shakespeare for the first time alone, in a small theater in Cambridge, sometime in my early twenties.
My kids saw Shakespeare in London, at The Globe, and are now falling in love.
They are so far ahead of me.
I’m so happy for them.
