It's a strange time to see the start of a new Globe season, given all the current
sound and fury over Emma Rice's premature departure (personally I'm sure the
situation is far more complex than it initially appeared, but I think the board's
official statement suggesting they're now interfering directly in artistic policy
was disastrous, whether that's literally true or just a badly-worded press release.)
Still, for the couple of remaining seasons we
will be seeing Rice in charge,
it's starting to look as is there's a theme to what'll end up on the Swanamaker
stage: Weird shit, possibly involving Philip Cumbus. For the first time the venue
attempts to recreate one of the elaborate masques that were a private treat for the
upper classes, with John Milton's
Comus: A Masque in Honour of Chastity. As
the subtitle suggests, this is a rather po-faced morality tale, but that's not quite
what director Lucy Bailey puts on stage.
