Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life by Dominic Dromgoole
Dromgoole is the artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe
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Published by Penguin Books, out February 22nd, paperback, 304 pages, £8.99.
In a nutshell.
Passionate. Reverent. Nostalgic. Engaging
What's it all about?
Dominic Dromgoole, the current artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, writes a memoir of the effect Shakespeare's works have had on his life. He recounts how Shakespeare was an integral part of his youth, from his father reciting whole scenes to him and his brother and sister at bedtime right through to young adulthood and finally retracing Shakespeare's own footsteps from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre in Southwark.
In a passionate exploration of the works of Shakespeare, Dromgoole takes in what Shakespeare meant to the public in the late 16th century and what relevance can be taken now. From luvvie encounters with Peter O'Toole at his parents' kitchen table to reading Julius Caesar aloud to a field of cows as a child, Will and Me illuminates the reader as to how Shakespeare informs notions of England, love, war, sex, death, drunkenness and friendship.
Who is it by?
Dominic Dromgoole was born in 1964, son of an actress turned schoolteacher and theatre director. He spent his childhood on a farm in Somerset; after Cambridge, where he read English, he started working part-time as an assistant director at the Bush Theatre. In 1990 he became artistic director of the Bush, and stayed there for the next seven years. After an interlude in charge of new plays for Sir Peter Hall's company at the Old Vic, he ran the Oxford Stage Company from 1998 until last year; he has just taken up the post of artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe. His only previous book was The Full Room. Dromgoole is married with three daughters, and lives in London.
As an example
"If I have one golden hour from my adolescence, it would be in the kitchen of our farmhouse, after a big, rough meal, and a bottle of wine each, and Peter O'Toole at one end of the table, tearing into that speech, waving an emphatic hand in the air with an impossibly chic cigarette holder between his fingers."
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
As memoirs go Gromgoole's is witty, fun, humorous and engaging. Despite America's predilection for anything remotely Shakespearean, I doubt that Dromgoole's ramble through the English countryside make for anything else than a self-reverential documentary.
What the others say
"A superbly written, infectiously high-spirited narrative. It is a bumptious, opinionated memoir crammed with fascinating anecdotes, finely tuned phrases, and genuine shafts of insight. A book hard to put down."- Irish Times.
"If this record of a lifelong obsession - articulate, intelligent and passionately set down - is anything to go by, the Globe Theatre, whose stewardship Dromgoole has recently taken over, could not be in better hands." - The Observer
So is it any good?
Dromgoole insists that Shakespeare is accessible to all, despite the fact that his very name invokes academia, perceived secret languages and unfortunately snobbery. However, to his credit Dromgoole goes out of his way to personalise his Shakespearean experiences and relates his experiences of girls, humour and life to the bard's writings.
We discover that Dromgoole is no obsessive, who finds no fault in Shakespeare's works. In fact Dromgoole is at pains to explain his long and varied relationship with the man and his works. He doesn't pretend that there aren't plot holes, and admits that he understood very little when he first saw a Shakespeare production.
Regardless, the overriding impression gleamed from Will and Me is the passion, which Dromgoole feels for the literature and the mystique behind the man. His journey is a little theatrical, but his intentions are honest and persuasive.
7/10
James Nye