A lovely book which is also deeply, deeply flawed.

The story of Shakespeare's Globe is a gripping one. After they lost the lease to their beloved (and groundbreaking) Theatre in 1598, Shakespeare's company literally tore down the building and moved it across the Thames to found the Globe. When that burned down, a couple of years before the Bard's death, it was rebuilt even grander than before. This second Globe came down after Puritans closed all theatres in the 1640s. Three centuries later, along came a young American actor, Sam Wanamaker. By now, the Globe was iconic around - well - the globe, representing the endless variety and determination of theatre people. Having performed as a supporting player at a "pop-up" globe in Chicago during his youth, Wanamaker moved to the UK with his family after WWII, excited to see what the UK had done to rebuild or commemorate its greatest-ever theatre. What he found? A single plaque. Worse still, Southwark was a barrage of warehouses and dilapidated buildings, with no desire to memorialise this incredible part of its history. (The Royal Shakespeare Company, based in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford, had this covered.)

And so Wanamaker devoted much of his life to pursuing his goal: an accurate, fully-working replica of the Globe which would present high quality performances of the Bard's work, provide educational experiences, and (if possible) avoid becoming the Shakespeare Disneyland. Over the next forty years he gathered around him famous actors, directors, wealthy moguls on both sides of the Atlantic, journalists, politicians, and the occasional Royal - losing them through his tempestuous personality as often as he gained them - in a fanatical drive to recover something great which had been lost. In the opposing corner were developers, bureaucratic local Councils, dogmatic residents' groups, myriad anti-intellectual or anti-tourist ideologies, and the vicissitudes of time and culture. Finally, as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, construction began on what now looms as a major tourist and cultural attraction. Sadly Sam would not live to see the official opening of the Globe, but 25 years after that date it provides a wealth of educational opportunities and - during the warmer months - some of the absolute most engaging Shakespeare performances I've yet to see.

(Tangent: if you have not seen the Globe's productions available on DVD or streaming, they are well worth seeking out. There are numerous projects filming live productions of the Bard at the moment, and each have their own merits. The National Theatre turns his works into accessible modern pieces, with less focus on the verse and more focus on concept. Stratford Festival, Ontario - in that adorable North American Anglophilic way - almost overly respects the text, providing engaging productions that often feel director-free. The Royal Shakespeare Company is the most forward-thinking of the three, and its productions are often invigorating as a result, trying to merge directorial ideas with textual ones. However the Globe's approach is, for my money, the most refreshing, lovely, and demonstrative of what made these plays sing in previous centuries - without giving in to silly desires for completely authentic "original performance" styles, which are needless sops to the past. They're truly delightful.)

This book, written by actor Barry Day, was designed as a merchandising tie-in for that official opening back in the mid-'90s. In some ways this is beneficial; Day explores at length the many dramas that took place, and no doubt gained access to a great deal of stories during that moment of cultural excitement. At the same time, it has all the nuance and perspective of a hagiography. Not to mention that it sometimes gets rather lost in the weeds, unable yet to pull back and see what details or stories will matter to an audience years later. (I, for instance, would have liked to know more about the preparations for the opening season of the Globe, and less about the internal fracas during a Wanamaker production 25 years earlier, but I appreciate that Day wanted to focus on the latter.)

More frustratingly, Day's structure is rather bewildering. While telling the broad story of Wanamaker's journey chronologically, he chooses to intersperse between chapters other, more focused stories, for example about the funding attempts from the USA or the battles with the local council. In some ways, this can be a sensible decision, but it leads the reader on a byzantine adventure. Perhaps Day could have used an objective proofreader, because he rather assumes an audience who were involved in the events or at least actively following the news of the preceding 25 years. He will often pre-empt things that won't happen for several chapters ("it was all going well but, as he'd soon find out, there were people in that room who didn't agree") without explaining what he means, or describe something before its time in the story, or refer obliquely to something that won't be explained until much later. In some ways, it also lessens the "flow" of the tale. Sure, okay, we know it's going to end well. But when you put the chapter about arguments over which design to use for the finished Globe several chapters before there is even a Globe to design, it makes the book feel like a collection of loosely-connected essays rather than a biography of a theatre. This isn't helped - as other reviews have noted - by Day's rather lax narrative style. He is frequently inventive with punctuation or throws in references to events that he assumes the audience is already familiar with, thus starting halfway through a story. The use of anecdote perhaps also devalues the book a little, since sometimes the line between fiction and non-fiction is barely visible.

All the same, the story of the Globe is a remarkable one, and it's a story close to my own heart. Day's book is nevertheless an insightful read for lovers of the Globe or Shakespeare's legacy. And indeed sometimes (by no means always!) the anecdotal approach is beneficial. Many of these marginal stories would not be picked up or available to a modern-day historian otherwise, as these as the scrapings of history which usually don't make the final cut.

As we emerge from two years of pandemic into presumably several years of whatever-the-hell-this-is-now, may blessings be showered upon the Globe and all who act in her. ( )