Review of PRINCESS ESSEX (follow link to review) at Shakespeare’s Globe. This is a hard one to judge. There are strong elements of pantomime and end of the pier show and yet the play is about the first black woman to enter a British beauty contest in 1908 at Southend. Racism is a major theme. It’s juggling a lot. Sadly the night we were there, the Globe pit (capacity 700) had only sixty people in it. The theatre in all had little more than a 100. One fifteenth its capacity. This is a mountain the cast climbed with gusto but it did greatly lessen its impact.
Peter Viney's Blog 