Duly saw the all-women Much Ado last night as a groundling in the open-air promenade arena at the Globe. The audience braved a veritable tempest of a night - a cold lashing wind, torrential downpour, thunder and lightening. The cast seemed to have no difficulty holding the audience's attention however, and merely raised their voices a few notches to be heard over the elements.

Being in the tow of my 12-year-old daughter I was somewhat relieved that the inuendo-laden punning I had been warned about in this thread was not overplayed! (Programme notes noted "noting" as the Elizabethan pronunciation of "nothing" and observed that this opened the way for various allusions. But the only one mentioned was the allusion to musical notation, this being something of a minor theme throughout the text. No mention of "noting" as a euphemism for nooky.)

Serious attention was paid to the songs and music. Most of the music (all of it on authentic period instruments (shawm, tabor, sackbut, recorder, etc) was from Italian sources, with one or two Spanish traditional tunes thrown in (as Messina had been under Spanish occupation).

CapriUni, the song "Pardon goddess of the night" was taken by all the cast and they followed what the programme notes described as a "calling voice" tradition still heard nowadays in many Mediterranean cultures. Quite punchy for religious song - a bit like the pub carol-singing in south Yorkshire.

As for the all-women cast.... It turns out that during the Restoration, there was some attempt to establish all-women companies in retaliation for the all-men companies that had hitherto prevailed. Reviving this at the Globe certainly gave the women plenty of opportunity to enjoy the various jokes at mens' expense. I need not have been concerned about it adding confusion to an already complicated plot. The costumes (Elizabethan, obviously) had been superbly designed, and the gender of the players was just not a factor. (Likewise with skin colour, showing with hindsight how ridiculous was all the nervousness about staging Othello in past years.) I still think it would help if the players had their names embroidered on their shirts. This has certainly been successful in football.

In fact the rough-and-ready feel of the whole production, the inclement weather and the hopeless impracticalities of the Globe itself gave the whole experience something of the feel of a school play. It brought home how tolerant and good-natured Elizabethan audiences must have been, and how far they were willing to suspend disbelief, in their determination to be entertained. Amazing that such literary riches should have been born out of such simple stuff.

In short, anyone interested in Shakespeare should try to catch at least one production at the Globe. On last night's showing, it isn't remotely touristy in the way I had expected, and you do leave with a real sense of where and how all this began.