Globe to Globe Blog: Jo Caird on a Korean Dream & the first production from a brand new nation

It all kicked off
nearly two weeks ago with a production of Venus and Adonis by
South African company, Isango Ensemble, and since then Globe
audiences have been treated to a remarkably diverse range of work,
including a Russian Measure for Measure, a Hindi Twelfth
Night and Richard III in Mandarin. I’ll be seeing some of
the remaining shows and sharing my thoughts about them and the
festival as a whole via this blog over the next five weeks.

My first taste of
the action was Seoul-based Yohangza Theatre Company’s spirited
telling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this production,
which was first seen in the UK at the Barbican in 2006, the fairies
were Dokkebi, mischevious goblins from Korean folklore. Titania and
Oberon’s roles had been reversed, Puck was represented by a pair of
naughty twin spirits and Bottom was an old woman herb collector
turned into a pig by the Fairy Queen. Theseus and Hippolyta, as well
as the Mechanicals, were nowhere to be seen.

Director Yang
Jung-Ung’s production was fast-paced and funny. The flavour was
resolutely Korean but Shakespeare’s drama of romantic confusion and
mischief remained entirely recognisable to a western audience,
despite only a handful of surtitles providing brief scene synopses.
There were a few jokes that went over the heads of non-Korean
speakers in the audience, but the vast majority of the laughs were
physical and therefore enjoyed by all.

The entire cast was
brilliant to watch in this regard, but Kim Sang-bo and Jeon Jung-Yong
as the Puck figure Duduri never missed a trick. Their facial
expressions alone provoked peals of laughter; in full clowning mode,
they had the Globe audience howling with delight. The whole ensemble
also made good use of the theatre’s unique layout to work the crowd,
coming out into the yard to play with the enthusiastic standees,
while not forgetting to engage with the audience in the galleries.

With its impressive
choreography (by Lee Yun-Jung), joyful moments of comedy and simple
storytelling, it’s no surprise that this colourful production has
gone down so well both at home in Korea and internationally.

Next up was last
night’s Cymbeline in Juba Arabic, a production
overbrimming with political, historical and cultural significance. It
was the first international production from the South Sudan Theatre
Company, a group specially formed for Globe to Globe just months
after South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in July 2011.

Cymbeline,
one of Shakespeare’s lesser performed plays, is set in Britain at
the time of the Celts, but there’s plenty in the story that speaks to
South Sudanese culture. Warfare, magic and battles over inheritance
all abound in a complex plot that revolves around a secret marriage
between Imogen, King Cymbeline’s only daughter, and her commoner
lover Posthumus. Aside from the drumming and dancing that book-ended
the performance, however, there was little in the production that
marked it out as particularly South Sudanese. Staging was
traditional, unadventurous even, with full weight given to the play’s
many lengthy monologues.

But although less
immediately accessible to a international audience than A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Derik Uya Alfred and Joseph Abuk’s
production (Abuk is billed as translator as well as co-director) shone when it came to the play’s sillier moments. Korino
Justin as Posthumus’s servant Pisanio, and Buturs Peter, as the
lothario Jackimo, both gave irreverant performances that lightened
the occasionally ponderous plotting. The final scene, in which an
implausible number of characters reveal their true identities and
motives, bordered on hysteria, with the cast playing the comedy for
all they were worth.

This may not have
been a sophisticated or polished telling of the play, but that didn’t
matter. As the cast danced and ululated their way through several
curtain calls, the audience were swept up in the palpable joy of a theatre company representing their brand new nation on the
internataional stage for the first time. Last night’s production is exactly what this festival is for.