Yes, that is where I went yesterday and that is where I spent a simply wonderful afternoon watching a matinee performance of the Merry Wives of Windsor and I think I can safely say I have not laughed so much for ages. My friend Linda and I were in the top gallery, front row seat, from where we had a wonderful view of all that was going on, could look down on the groundlings and would have been in a perfect position to chuck fruit and veg if we had not liked the play. I simply adore going to the Globe. It has the most wonderful atmosphere, everyone who is there is expecting to have a jolly good time and to be thoroughly entertained, and they are. The afternoon performance of MWOW was sold out as was the evening performance of King Lear. Some members of the audience I got chatting to were going to both. This wonderful theatre receives not a penny piece in subsidy from anybody and I cannot help but be thankful for this, no government set targets to meet, no inclusivity, no ethic minorities that they have to allow for and keep happy - and the odd thing is that this theatre probably does all that without even 
thinking. The place was simply heaving with people, vast amount of whom were under the age of thirty with loads of teenagers and school trips in evidence, and all having a hoot.
Christopher Benjamin, who I used to meet years ago as a reader when I worked at Highgate Library and who was in the Forsyte Saga (the first series) at the time, was Falstaff and was very very funny and, at the end, when he is brought to book for all his misdemeanours, quite touching. The entire cast was solid and acted beautifully, even the 'rude mechanicals. who I normally find singularly unfunny in all Shakespeare's plays, whose comic timing was spot on.
Star of the show, however, which I am not sure was intended, was not Falstaff but Master Ford, the jealous husband played by Andrew Havill, one of those actors whose face is familiar and who is always around, but never lauded. Five minutes into the play, everyone suddenly twigged that he had based his characterisation on Basil Fawlty as created by the wonderful John Cleese. The expressions, the furious shaking of fists behind people's backs, the walk, everything. Slightly puzzled by this, though it worked simply amazingly well, until I happened to open my programme in the interval and came across an article 'To the Manner Born' in which The Merry Wives is likened to a sitcom and there was a picture of Basil Fawlty himself. Not sure that purists would approve but I, and everyone else in the Globe, simply loved it. I would say that when he came to take his bow the applause was loud enough to take the roof off, but as the Globe does not 
posses one this would prove a tad difficult....
Before the play started I fell into conversation with two very nice ladies who persuaded me, with no difficulty whatsoever, to become a Friend of the Globe. £38 a year and then realized that with my now available concession, it was £30 so no argument really. This gives me advance booking, free entry to the permanent exhibition and tours of the Globe, 10% off at the shop etc etc. I thought this was jolly good value for money and was leaving to go into the theatre when I was called back 'oh and as this is the 21st year of the Friends and as you have joined today, here is a gift for you' and I was handed a box in which resided a Friends of the Globe mug.
Just what I needed.
