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… is actually a topic of discussion here at the moment. The word refers to the fact that the Anglican church is ‘established’ in the UK, that is that the church and state are closely intertwined.

For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen by the Prime Minister, from a short list of two. Also, some bishops who have the right to sit in the House of Lords, and the highest ecclesiastical court is made up of members of the Lords. The crime of blasphemy is only applicable to the Christian church. No catholic can ever become King or Queen of England.

I think the multicultural, multi-faith nature of British society makes the privileged position of the Anglican church an anachronism. This makes me a disestablishmentarian. If you disagree, you may proudly call yourself an antidisestablishmentarian.

Now if only there was a scrabble board big enough…

Update: The general synod has voted 2 to 1 to maintain the current situation, where bishops and archbishops must be approved by the Prime Minister, claiming that to change it would be the first step towards disestablishment.

Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms Of Pseudoscience

Poor old England. Always the runner up.

After the euphoria of beating Argentina for the first time since 1966, and at last having a team with some talent and form, they go out to the soon-to-be champions Brazil.

Then Henman loses after a spirited match with Hewitt at Wimbledon, who again goes on to win the championship.

Still - its good the see a fellow South Australian winning Wimbledon. Good to hear talk of Adelaide again. Even makes me a bit homesick.

The BBC have just finished replaying their famous version of P&P. I watched the final episode, and its even better the second time around - wonderfully coy and multi-layered.

But the best thing was the promotion they have been showing. On grainy old videotape you see Mr Darcy climb out of the water in front of Elizabeth in the famous scene. Suddenly the action reverses as if you pressed the rewind button. He climbs out again, and again, and again.

Finally it pauses on a wet Darcy, and a woman says in a breathy, sultry voiceover: ‘Hearts will be heaving’.

I laughed lots

It rained in the morning, but the weather reports had said that there was a chance of the evening being fine. Now there is always a sell out at the Globe, but I thought that the weather might keep a few people away from an open air theatre, and decided to go along and see if I could get a return.

So I hopped on the train at 6pm (the shows in summer start at 7:30) and by 5 past 7 I was at the theatre, in a queue of 6 people. Looking good so far. The group of four ahead of me got the best deal - an audience member walked up and offered them 4 groundling tickets he didn’t need, for nothing. Down to two. After a few minutes a Globe staff member came out with a single in the Lord’s box, standing on the balcony above the stage for £5, or a selection of undercover seats at about £20.

I of course wanted the Lord’s box, espescially as I can’t really afford the seats at the moment, and I expected the person in front of me to have the same idea, but I underestimated his conservatism. He went for the seats, which is how I ended up climbing the stairwell marked ‘Private’ backstage, and leaning on the balustrade above the stage.

Whenever I’ve gone before, I have been a groundling (standing on the floor in front of the stage) and this is still my favourite way to watch at thhe Globe. And in most discussions of the Elizabethan stage there is considerable scepticism that the Lord’s boxes provided any useful view of the action. On the basis of my experience, this is not so. Most of the action at the Globe happens centre stage, or at least quite far out on the apron, so that the only thing you can’t see from above is the entrances and exits, and these are pretty obvious. You can hear perfectly. This is true anywhere in the Globe, for a large (yes, the 5th largest capacity in London) theatre to have such perfect acoustics is one of the wonders of the place.

Given that you’re behind the actors, you can also see a remarkable amount of what goes on. This is largely because of the unique playing style of the Globe. An audience on all sides and no ’scenery’ to distract means that the actors continually move and everything possible is physicalised - the amount of movement even in soliloquy is one of the immediately noticeable things about plays here. Some have speculated that the common use of repetition, particularly in threes in Shakespeare (’Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’) is to allow the actors to direct the same emotion to the three ’sides’ of the stage.

So after all that, what of the play? Well its quite a good version, if not as magical as it could be. It is played in pyjamas, and as usual here all parts are doubled up, with the same actors who play the Duke and Duchess playin Oberon and Titania, etc. This is normally done with costume changes, but in this production a nice conceit was used - the actors have lights sewn into their pyjama tops, and these are lit when they become fairies. Yes, that’s right, they are ‘fairy lights’.

The pyjamas tend to level all the characters however, and there is not the sense of danger and difference that should be evident in the trickster Puck. The sense of command and power in Oberon and Titania is lacking too, and the drama loses some of its tension because of it. In a sense the whole play is a dream from the start, rather than revealed as such at the end. There is a feeling that the characters know that there will be no true repercussions from their actions, and so the motive for the audience to care is missing.

But this is a subtle point, and the action of the play is well presented. There is some singing and dancing, and the Globe’s magical acoustics make the songs rich and lively. Where so often the call for music and merriment in Shakespeare is these days embarrassed and kept as brief as posible, here the place comes alive, and the audience is swept up in the sound and merriment.

The amateur theatricals of Bottom and Wall at the end of the play were fun, of course, with some nice sight gags involving Bottom’s use of a shaving cream wig and beard.

After the play, at about 9:30 in a beautiful purple London dusk, I walked back across the Millenium bridge towards St Pauls’ and the Cannon St underground station. Around me the sound of the (mostly young) crowd discussing their recent discovery of Shakespeare. What a nice way to end the evening.

Way up past Camden on the Northern Line is Chalk Farm - the location for the new Roundhouse theatre. There’s not much around here yet - a service station, a couple of low-key pubs and a kebab shop.

The Roundhouse itself is a conversion of a railway turntable building from the 1850s. When I was a kid I remember playing with toy railways, which almost always had a little turntable where the trains can be re-routed onto other tracks. This is the real thing, and its massive. It’s a cylindrical building in the beautiful and ubiquitous London clay bricks, about 200m in diameter, with a high wooden roof held up by massive cast-iron columns.

Built inside this building is a theatre in the round, seating about 1000 people in highly raked seating. Sightlines are excellent, and the initial feel is somewhat like the Globe, but with cushioned seats. Interestingly it doesn’t feel as intimate though.

The play (Pericles) is a late collaboration known from a quarto published shortly after the first performance. It was one of the the most popular plays in its time, but is not greatly performed these days. This is largely because its a spectacle in the physical but not the psychological sense.

There is a bewildering array of locations, incest, about 20 severed heads, no less than three shipwrecks, an abduction by pirates, a scene in a bawdy house, a death, a birth, a resurrection, a famine and a tournament. Not to mention the usual set of mistaken identities and misconceptions.

One of the attractions for the Elizabethans was undoubtedly the oriental settings, and this is nicely evoked in this production. As you enter the entire space is filled with persian style candle lanterns hanging at different levels and giving a wonderful depth to the stage. Unfortunately they lift these up when the play starts, presumably to improve the sightlines, but I think it would be better if they stayed in place.

The costumes are colour coded by location in this production, which helps the audience to work out exactly what is going on. It is still quite tricky to get a feel of the places - the first half of the play is a Cook’s tour of a mythical orient, with no more than a quick sketch of character or place. According to the program, it is felt that this part is not by Shakespeare, or the quarto is a a bad transcription, and it shows. There is more action than act, and this production tries and nearly succeeds in making the spectacle work. The aim is to do something with the feel of Gladiator, not a bad comparison given that a gladitorial contest is key to the story.

The second half is better, even if the story sometimes lurches awkwardly. There is humour, as the heroine of the play, Pericles’ daughter, abducted by pirates and sold into sex slavery, manages to maintain her virginity in a bawdy house by being so pure that her clients are shamed into abstinence. Shakespeare’s presumed collaborator in the play is John Gowes, who owned bawdy houses in Bankside, so this scene has a gritty reality (except of course for her maintained chastity).

The music is worth mentioning. The small orchestra includes several folk instruments of the region, and it is refreshingly gutsy, and adds a lot to the sense of place.

The denoument clears up the many loose threads, and the fact that everyone ends up living happily ever after is the best indication that this is not a genuine Shakespeare play. Not a bad production, and parts are quite fun, but I don’t think it will lead to a revival of the play.

Free as in books is a slashdot article about a unique book sharing website BookCrossing seems like quite good fun.