A player king ... Mark Rylance as Prospero in The Tempest at the Globe. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Mark Rylance sounded surprisingly down in the mouth in his interview in Saturday's Guardian about his decade in charge of Shakespeare's Globe. "Sometimes I feel very happy and exhilarated, and sometimes I'm in the other place. Confused," he told Charlotte Higgins. Like Eeyore, some people find it hard to be cheerful even when things go well. But if it's any comfort to Rylance, I and many other theatregoers think he achieved something quite extraordinary at the Globe.
Some reviewers and theatre professionals remain sniffy about his thatched replica theatre overlooking the Thames, but I think they're wrong. Rylance may be a maverick who doubts whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays published under his name, but if he's an oddball, then we could do with more like him.
I've seen the vast majority of the Globe's productions since it opened its doors in the mid-90s, making Sam Wanamaker's dream a reality after many years of planning and funding setbacks. I can understand why it's not everybody's theatrical cup of tea; there are helicopters buzzing overhead, and sometimes the heavens open, soaking the groundlings - but it exemplifies for me what Peter Brook meant by "the rough theatre" in his 1968 book The Empty Space. The actors have to forget their usual techniques and start learning all over again; acting in daylight means building a completely different relationship with the audience. The Globe stage is an unforgiving place, but Rylance always knew how to carry the audience with him without crossing the line into ham acting. His brilliant acting isn't the only reason to look back fondly on his time at the Globe, though.
There still seems to be a view among those who haven't been to the Globe that it's one step up from a "medieval" banquet - a place for "heritage theatre" where no risks are taken. But Rylance always balanced his "original practices" productions in period costume with experimental work. By the time he left at the end of 2005, he had achieved a near-impossible combination of full houses, affordable seats, innovative productions and a young audience, backed up by an outstanding education programme.
All this was done without any subsidy, so it's perhaps understandable that he is less than polite about the RSC, which managed to implode spectacularly under Adrian Noble during the same period.
Now the theatre is run by another theatrical troublemaker, Dominic Dromgoole, who shows every sign of building on Rylance's work while striking out in fresh directions. Last summer's Coriolanus was outstanding. There are however some areas where the Globe still has to raise its game. Both Rylance and Dromgoole are thin-skinned with journalists and critics, which may explain why the Globe has garnered little in the way of awards and good press.
Here's a tip. The theatre would improve its chances of winning an Olivier if it offered judges a seat and a free cushion instead of expecting them to stand as groundlings. I quite enjoy paying a fiver to stand among the students from Nebraska, but not everyone does.
One area where Rylance didn't succeed was in finding new writers to exploit the Globe's unique space in the way Shakespeare did. His favourite playwright was Peter Oswald, whose work left me completely cold. Dromgoole last season staged a show about pirates which I didn't see, and In Extremis, a rather so-so play by Howard Brenton which proved popular with audiences and is due to be revived this year. This year he's added a play about the American Revolution and a new drama by Jack Shepherd set in early Victorian London, so there's everything to play for when the Globe opens its doors in May.
Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the spring treat of seeing Mark Rylance safely framed by the proscenium arch of the Comedy Theatre in Boeing Boeing.
