by Violet Rook
Have you ever been in the kitchen, with the Television on in another
room, hearing the soundtrack of a film?
Washing the dishes then turning off the taps, my attention turned to
the noise in the background.
The noise seemed to be music, dramatic soft, loud, strings, and drums.
Was this a pop concert perhaps. I entered the other room sitting
down to stare at the attics of a very popular spy thriller ‘bourne’ as they
said of the Ian Fleming mould. Listening to the speech of the
characters was not very difficult, the action was the thing.
On another occasion I tried the same test to a more wordy film. When
not in the same room the visual tended to indicate the speech, out of
the room the sounds were of the music filling the gaps.
Do sound and vision combine or distract from each other?
The sound of the human voice is the first sound we hear as we come
into the world and the sound of the human cry helps to expand the
lungs of the baby and help it live. Imagine then having to sit on a
building site in semi gale conditions listening to a Shakespearean play.
The wind blowing wild and wet, across the Thames, freezing
the fingers grasping a paper cup of hot tea while sitting on a straw mat
turning from side to side attending to the players shouting to be heard.
This was “The Tempest”, being acted out
in these very apt conditions on what was a building site on the banks of
the Thames.
It was not just any building site with bricks rubble and the usual odd bits
of sand and gravel,but the beginnings of what is now the Globe theatre.
The sky was getting darker and the rain seem to be getting wetter, but
still the players dressed in old coats and scarves hats and pieces of
rag uttered the words of the play.
Mark Rylance was Prospero on a very stormy evening on the
foundations of what was to become the home of the rebuilt theatre.
I was reminded of this event on watching a very popular TV programme
concerning geneology and the idea of a Globe theatre rebuilt on the
banks of the Thames.
My acquaintance had described the scene so vividly, there in the
open, with the sound of the elements whistling in the ears of actors and
audience, both having to dry their faces regularly, the human voice had
a major task, there were no microphone around the neck.
Yet the scene encouraged close attention, turning to follow the players
and their speech right and left, the stage being the ground, dressed
with building material, helped by the dramatic effect of the wind and rain.
The thought came to me that this was perhaps the first performance
seen at that theatre.
The elements combined to make the visual images and the scene more
realistic and a memory of lasting delight. A tempest indeed. The Duke
of Milan’s work was indeed magic.
