Saturday 4 February 2017

A trip to heaven and hell - behind the scenes at the Globe

Heaven and Hell Tour, Shakespeare's Globe, London. January 2017.


As regular readers of this blog know the Globe and Sam Wanamaker Theatre are places that I like and willingly spend my time (apologies for the appropriation of Shakespeare for that line!). Before I'd even seen a show here, way back in 2010, I took the general tour and fell in love with the space.


When the extra special tour for Friends of the Globe coincided with a night Rebecca and I would be in London it seemed like fate and we were at the Globe before 10am on a Sunday morning for our tour of the theatre from top to bottom.

We were encouraged to take photos as we were taken right up to the very top of the theatre, in to the heavens, and then even under the stage to peer up through the trap door.  We even got taken down below this level to the room where (some) of the costumes and props are stored.
Our guide was wonderful and gave us a talk that included how the building was built, how the shows are staged, how the effects work, anecdotes from past productions and tidbits of information about plans for the theatre,  He was also wonderfully balanced and talked about things that had gone wrong and also what was incorrect about the building as has been discovered through research in the past 20 years - not least that the stage is built from the wrong wood!

I can't begin to replicate the tales so I am just going to fill this post with pictures from the tour!

We started on the stage in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse



We then went, via the "dressing room" to the very top of the building, to the heavens.






The trap that lets people fly from down from heaven was then opened for us



We then went down to the musician gallery level


And then we got to go on the stage - the audience are *very* close!




The we went under the stage, right down to hell - it was surprisingly chilly!



Then we got taken to one of the costume and prop store, we were allowed to touch the costumes and wield a sword







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