Dominic Dromgoole, who runs Shakespeare's Globe, is a romantic at heart. And his latest plan, which is to send Romeo and Juliet on tour to English parks, gardens, country houses and castles, has a fine Elizabethan ring to it. I also welcome anything that spreads Shakespeare around the country. But I'd say the scheme depends heavily on two things: suitable spaces and a fine summer.
Although Dromgoole is dispatching a team of properly paid-up professionals, his plan sparked memories of an undergraduate tour in which I once took part. The play was Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. The directors were Ken Loach and David Webster, who later became a distinguished judge. The cast even included Dudley Moore, in a minor musical role. First we went to Leicester's Guildhall, which, for all its period authenticity, proved hopelessly cramped for Jonson's sprawling play. Then we played in The Dell in Stratford-on-Avon, in the shadow of Holy Trinity, and the open-air and a glorious summer released the play's magic. We even made good use of the site by hurling Justice Overdo, who is expelled from the fair, into the Avon every night.
The moral, if there is one, is that touring can either be a trial or a triumph. Playing Shakespeare in castles and country houses sounds fine; but I suspect it will offer a severe test of stage-management, as well as the cast, to overcome dry acoustics and poor sight-lines. There can, however, be something magical about open-air Shakespeare on a fine summer night. I'm intrigued to see the Globe tour takes in Oxford where people still reminisce about a legendary Nevill Coghill production of The Tempest in which Ariel came ethereally skimming across the surface of Worcester College lake, supported only by invisible duckboards.
Even the notion of touring a play, especially one by Shakespeare, has something romantic about it. Ireland for years sustained fit-up and touring companies of which the most famous was the one run by Anew McMaster and which in the 1950s boasted Harold Pinter, Barry Foster and Kenneth Haigh in its ranks. I suspect that touring also bonds actors together and produces a company spirit impossible to achieve when people are leading separate, metropolitan lives. Which brings to mind the old joke about the veteran Shakespearean actor asked whether Hamlet ever slept with Ophelia. "Only on tour," he crisply replied.
Dromgoole is restoring a great tradition in sending Romeo and Juliet out on the road and showing that Shakespeare's Globe is far more than a London tourist-trap. But I'm fascinated to see that the final date is Lord's cricket ground. Are MCC members quite ready for this? And where exactly do you pitch Shakespeare's tragedy at Lord's? I have an image of Romeo shinning up the home team's pavilion balcony in a desperate attempt to reach Juliet. I also have a secret hope that the actors will get to play a game of cricket on the sacred turf, although that could influence casting. Sir Frank Benson's hearty Stratford company in the early years of the last century inserted a famous advertisement in a trade paper: "Wanted. Slow left-arm bowler who can also play Romeo." Is history, I wonder, about to repeat itself?
