{"id":689751,"date":"2026-07-13T18:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689751\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T18:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:36:10","slug":"i-just-knew-it-would-sound-incredible-why-the-globe-is-giving-shakespeare-some-flamenco-fire-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689751\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I just knew it would sound incredible!\u2019: why the Globe is giving Shakespeare some flamenco fire | Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a heatwave day in London, Shakespeare\u2019s Globe has turned into a fiesta. Hard-heeled boots strike the wooden boards with rat-a-tat rhythm, skirts swish, a guitar strums, voices rise along with the temperature. Perched in front of the stage is director Indiana Lown-Collins<\/a>, who is zhooshing up one of Shakespeare\u2019s wordiest plays with a hot flourish of flamenco.<\/p>\n

Lown-Collins is half-Spanish and grew up in Spain where flamenco was her way into the arts. Working as resident associate director at the Globe a few years ago, she fell in love with the building and its acoustics and couldn\u2019t stop thinking how well flamenco would work on its oak stage, ringing around the circular space. \u201cI just knew it would sound incredible,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Invited to direct a production at the theatre, the quest was on to find the play that would fit. Lown-Collins landed on Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost, an early comedy. A Spanish king and his lords swear off women and ban them from court, so when a foreign princess arrives, she and her ladies are forced to set up camp outside the city. Of course, the lords all fall for the ladies. \u201cA lot of this play is about passion, love, sex, and death \u2013 and flamenco does sex and death really well,\u201d says Lown-Collins.<\/p>\n

\u2018By the jig people will want to dance\u2019 \u2026 rehearsals on the Globe\u2019s oak stage. Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

She liked the strong female characters. \u201cThe matriarchy is the heart and soul of flamenco,\u201d she says. \u201cWe wanted to show the power of these women coming into a court that\u2019s not theirs, to take it by storm.\u201d On stage in rehearsal, the women descend staircases and begin to surround and encroach on the men in the centre, like a gang of sirens.<\/p>\n

There are only two professional flamenco dancers in the cast (Pablo Egea and Anita La Maltesa), everyone else is being drilled in a three-hour daily bootcamp by choreographer Carmen Igarza. Some of them are way out of their comfort zone. It\u2019s a bit like doing Strictly, one of the team told the actors. \u201cFrom here to Sadler\u2019s Wells, you never know!\u201d laughs Spanish actor Bea Segura.<\/p>\n

Their progress so far is impressive, even if you can still see people desperately counting beats as they try to hit the accents. Just donning the right shoes has transformed the actors into flamenco performers \u2013 heeled boots make everyone walk with swagger (even if some of the men in rehearsal have teamed them with cargo shorts). At first, Lown-Collins tells me, one of the actors asked for flat shoes. \u201cNow he\u2019s like, don\u2019t take my heels away! It gives you posture and power and presence,\u201d she says, \u201cand an air of \u2018Aren\u2019t we beautiful human beings! Look at how we can move!\u2019 Thinking about my British culture, I don\u2019t think we celebrate our physical humanity in the same way. We\u2019re very apologetic,\u201d she says, whereas in Spain it\u2019s different: \u201c\u2018Look at me and my new skirt, how tight it is, showing off my gluteus maximus!\u2019\u201d In the play, the male characters are trying to tamp down their feelings, but when they can\u2019t contain them any more, that\u2019s when the flamenco life force bursts out.<\/p>\n

\u2018Posture, power and presence\u2019 \u2026 Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost rehearsals. Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

As well as tying the actors\u2019 feet and brains in knots, the complex rhythms of flamenco are also reflecting the language of the play. \u201cThis play has the most couplets of any Shakespeare I\u2019ve ever done, they are constantly rhyming and coupleting,\u201d says Lown-Collins. \u201cThe other day someone said, \u2018Oh, I might try that on the rhythm of flamenco, rather than Shakespeare. I\u2019m going to follow the composer,\u201d says Lown-Collins, and it worked. The music is composed by flamenco guitarists Michael McMahon and Adri\u00e1n Sol\u00e1, who are part of the company on stage, with musicians including singer Carlos Lobo Cord\u00f3n.<\/p>\n

Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost is a clever play full of wordy pedantry. \u201cIt\u2019s the play that\u2019s called the feast of languages,\u201d says Lown-Collins. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s delicious language. But yes, it is very wordy.\u201d That\u2019s partly why she wanted to try this flamenco reboot. \u201cWhat if you put something that is extremely visceral and physical alongside it?\u201d In other words, bring everyone out of their heads, and into their bodies, audience included \u2013 the crowd will get their chance to move at the end of the show. \u201cI\u2019m just hoping that by the jig people will want to dance,\u201d Lown-Collins grins as the rhythm strikes up.<\/p>\n

Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost is at Shakespeare\u2019s Globe, London<\/a>, 17 July to 13 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a heatwave day in London, Shakespeare\u2019s Globe has turned into a fiesta. Hard-heeled boots strike the wooden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-689751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}