The 37th Play

However you look at it, I've waited a long time to achieve this. All 37* Shakespeare plays, on stage, in professional productions**. My rules.

Some have been very difficult to achieve. Timon of Athens was a toughie, in more senses than one, as Will seemed to forget about an ending to that one. Titus Andronicus was ticked off four years ago at the Globe, and it was the Globe which came up trumps again for the final play, Henry VIII***. And, really, the finale one had to be either there, or Stratford, didn't it?

Even better was when we discovered that Dominic Rowan was to play Henry (clearly the days of ginger Henry's are over), as we (re-)discovered him in As You last Summer.

The last time Henry VIII was performed at the Globe, the cannon set the thatch alight and the theatre burned down. 'Risky', I commented, when we got to that bit in the performance.
As a spectacle it worked really well, with wonderful costumes, and really suited the Globe space. As a play, well, it's not one of Will's best, though some scenes and characters are very strong. Dense and unfamiliar, it took some concentration at the start until your ears adjusted to the words. It suffers from not having one main protagonist, and could do with more severe cutting than it had received in this production, as the second half of the second act did drag a bit. Henry doesn't have a great deal to do, apart from stand around in rather fabulous costumes (very fine calves, Dominic), and I can see why they kept this section in, as it's the bit that shows Henry as the just and wise king, but it did seem unneccessary.

The strongest characters are the Duke of Buckingham, Katherine, a fine and very moving performance from Kate Duchene, and Wolsley, a disappointing one from Ian McNeice, so much so that his fall from power went for nothing, and you never felt that he actually cared at all. In contrast, Katherine was electric in the trial scene. It was a production which also utilised the lesser characters well to add some humour, and to play off the Globe audience. As we've done before we had two seated tickets, and two groundling tickets so that we got two different expereinces of the performance.

And the sun shone. An excellent way to mark this milestone - and thanks, and many hugs to Corinne, Cat, and Dean who were there to celebrate it with me.

*Let's not talk about any additions to the canon, ok?

**So no conflations of the Henry VI's, and no, Kneehigh's Cymbeline does not count, given it met the Shakespeare play once in a bar

***There have been two other occasions when know I could have seen it, both in Stratford, in 1983 and 1996. It doesn't come round very often.