I saw the Globe’s tempest over the weekend. A very maddening madcap production.

In its programmes we’re told the four characters who inhabit the island are the four tellers who have no way getting off the island and that they meet once a month to recount what they have been.

And they are competing to tell the narrative, but then the show presents itself as a last minute performance, made up of random audience members—they literally bumble onto the stage from the audience, playing different London audience tropes including a steward.

So they’re both supposed to be intimately familiar with each other but also complete strangers 🤷‍♂️

At times I enjoyed the constant irreverent breaking of the fourth wall. It was very Monty python and the holy grail. But I was a bit disappointed they cut Prospero’s epilogue.

I guess they wanted the play to feel unresolved, but why? Im all for highlighting the problematic elements in Shakespeare, but I’m getting jaded by the ‘what if, then what’ tone to these kinds of productions and their directors who don’t seem that interested in answering their own questions.