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Friday 9 January 2009

An eccentric part of the landscape

Robert Gore-Langton talks to an irreverent Dominic Dromgoole about the Globe

As for the accusation that it’s packed full of tourists, Dromgoole says when they did a survey it was about 20 per cent of the gate. ‘Anyway, who cares? They didn’t build the first Globe to keep the tourists out. In fact the only information we have about the original theatre is a sketch and a diary entry by a Swiss and a German — both tourists in Shakespeare’s cosmopolitan London.’

It would be wonderful one year to have a season of plays not by Shakespeare at the Globe. Dromgoole agrees but points out that they would lose about £3 million and around 30 jobs if they did. When the smaller indoor theatre next to the Globe — currently a shell — raises the required £3 million, there’ll be a place for the other great dramatists of the period. Top of his wish list are Marston’s The Malcontent and Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl.

Dromgoole’s contract runs to 2011, although he hopes to be able to stay for the Olympics. But he’s doing the job for the best of reasons. It’s fun. Just as thunder rumbles ominously for the matinée of King Lear, he sniffs the wind for rain and says, ‘There’s very little as pleasurable as playing Shakespeare in a beautiful theatre to appreciative audiences beside a river during the summer. There’s not a lot wrong with that.’

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