Shakespeare pops up at Blenheim Palace: The Rose Theatre reigns supreme this summer, along with a thatched pub, wagons and singing minstrels
- This pop-up three-tiered, 13-sided theatre is based on the Rose Theatre of 1587
- Tour the palace and afterwards take your seat for one of Shakespeare’s legendary plays
- Mark Palmer was there for the opening night of Macbeth and found the whole experience electrifying
Pop-ups to the left of us, pop-ups to the right of us. But none, surely, quite so ambitious as Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, which after its success last year in York, has been erected in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
What a day out. Arrive in pretty Woodstock for lunch, then a tour of Blenheim Palace (seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill) followed by a production of ‘the Scottish play’ Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet or Richard III.
We were there for the opening night of Macbeth and found the whole experience more electrifying, comfortable and cheaper than an evening at London’s Globe Theatre. The brainchild of Yorkshire impresario James Cundall, the pop-up comprises a three-tiered, 13-sided Elizabethan theatre, taking the 1587 Rose Playhouse in London as its template.
The pop-up comprises a three-tiered, 13-sided Elizabethan theatre, taking the 1587 Rose Playhouse in London as its template
Mark writes: ‘It looks spectacular and sits in a pop-up Tudor village, complete with minstrels, wagons and a thatched pub selling food and drink at reasonable prices’
Spectacular: The management team and actors declare the theatre and village open
It looks spectacular and sits in a pop-up Tudor village, complete with minstrels, wagons and a thatched pub selling food and drink at reasonable prices.
We were in the second tier.
Below us, those with ‘Groundling’ tickets (£15) were often part of the action as the cast pushed their way through the standing crowd – some people lay on their backs and watched horizontally.
Toil and trouble: The cast of the Rose Theatre’s Macbeth on opening night at Blenheim Palace
This picture shows a performance of Romeo & Juliet. The theatre was constructed using state-of-the-art scaffolding technology, corrugated iron and timber
The theatre houses an audience of 900, with 560 seated on three tiered balconies around an open-roofed courtyard, with standing room for 340 ‘groundlings’. Pictured is the theatre mid-way through
Anyone partial to Game Of Thrones will love this production of Macbeth, with its outrageous costumes, weird witches and gruesome murders.
By the end of the night, blood covered much of the stage as power, ambition and avarice variously were cut up into small pieces.
How comforting in such a setting to hear Macbeth’s great speech reminding us that ‘life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more’. Well we certainly hope this excellent theatre group pops up again and is heard some more.
TRAVEL FACTS
Rose Theatre at Blenheim continues until September 7, tickets from £15, children from £12, (blenheimpalace.com/shakespearesRT).
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