The Globe, Act 2 : A $20-million grant pushes London’s re-creation of Shakespeare’s Globe closer to completion, but is the public ready for a 17th century theater experience?

William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre died with a whoosh on the afternoon of June 29, 1613: A stage cannon saluting the king’s entry in “Henry VIII” set the thatched roof ablaze.

For 25 years, a stubborn American’s dream of re-creating the theater has limped along, bedeviled by controversy, delays, money problems and the snooty refusal of Britain’s arts establishment to take it seriously.

It has been a long road. But a new Globe is abuilding here not far from the original--and suddenly its future is assured.

An award of $20 million this fall from the British Arts Council exceeded what has been raised in two decades from private sources. Is such a high-tone imprimatur belated recognition of the late Sam Wanamaker’s farsightedness or merely acknowledgment that the new Globe, like it or not, is an emerging fact of cultural life here?

That’s cocktail party chatter, darling. But the money is substantive; it will allow for the completion of the outdoor Globe and an adjoining indoor theater based on the designs of English architect Inigo Jones, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s.

“We are delighted--we’ll certainly open next year. And we can plan a steady and competent building program without cash flow worries for the first time,” said Michael Holden, chief executive of the Globe project, on the south bank of the River Thames.

Wanamaker, an American actor, handpicked the site. By the time he died in 1993, he had devoted much of his life to re-creating Shakespeare’s stage in the now-rundown London neighborhood called Southwark, where the playwright lived and wrote for three decades.

Wanamaker, an unabashed eccentric when it came to theaters, fought all comers to create an authentic, down-home showcase for the Bard’s genius.

“For 25 years, the project has been dogged by sniffiness and the view that it’s something which is touristy and Disneyland and down-market,” said actress Zoe Wanamaker, the dreamer’s daughter, last month when it seemed as if the council funds might not be forthcoming.

With Globe reproductions scattered around the world, Sam Wanamaker was astonished that London had never bothered to seriously honor Shakespeare.

“I remember Sam running my kids around the empty lot. ‘It’s going to be round, and it’s going to be built in your lifetime,’ he’d say,” recalled Marina Blodget, a longtime family friend who is now an executive at the project. “Sam could never get mainstream support. He was an American, an actor and a Jew who came and told the Brits what to do. They didn’t like it.”

Private and corporate contributions trickled in, a third of them from America. In 1987, construction began while fund-raising continued. When the total reached 9 million pounds (about $15.5 million) last summer, philanthropist Gordon Getty kept a 1-million-pound matching pledge, which he had made to Wanamaker at the groundbreaking ceremony 18 years earlier.

About the same time the Getty money landed, the scaffolding came down from the Globe, adding a provocative 17th century landmark--a sort of low-rise timber-frame doughnut--to London’s skyline. Construction on the last two bays of seats of the open-air theater was almost complete when mainstream Britain came aboard with a decisive thud.

“The Arts Council grant demonstrates that faith is growing in this project started by Sam Wanamaker over 25 years ago. It is a tribute to his vision,” said Michael Perry, chairman of the Globe trustees.

A t the insistence of Wanamaker and his successors on the proj ect, the new theater is physically as close to the original 1599 Globe as research can make it, though because no plans survive, the exact specifications have occasioned impassioned debate. The original Globe is known principally from woodcuts, travelers’ tales and archeological traces.

Turning all the research into plans was the job of the late British architect Theo Crosby. The new theater is made of immensely strong, green (unseasoned) oak; its walls are plastered with a mixture called lime render that has been mixed with goat’s hair and applied over hand-split oak laths.

The new Globe also has the first thatch roof laid in London since the Great Fire in 1666. But 20th century fire marshals have had their say: Amid the thatch lurks a sophisticated sprinkler system.

There are 1,000 seats in the three-level wooden amphitheater and room for perhaps 500 standees, called “groundlings” in Shakespeare’s day, to jostle in the pit between the seats and the stage.

With a bow to Britain’s notoriously bad winter weather, the theater plans two performances a day from spring until early autumn. These will be day performances as well--this time a bow to authenticity. No artificial lights meant no nighttime theater in Shakespeare’s day.

An exhibition hall in a thoroughly modern concrete basement will function year-round, as will the indoor Inigo Jones theater (not yet under construction) and an educational center.

Carpenters are still hammering, but a good bet for the opening of the Globe is June 14 (Wanamaker’s birthday), with a performance of “Julius Caesar.” Initially, the programming will focus on plays by the Bard and his contemporaries.

“We will be trying to approximate performances of Shakespeare’s time,” Holden said in an interview. “There will be no lights, no sets beyond some backdrops. Sometimes actors will wear period dress, but we are mindful that in Shakespeare’s time actors dressed pretty much as their audience: T-shirts and jeans may be appropriate for us.”

The whole complex is seen as a focus for Southwark renewal, and even before the theater is finished, its appeal is manifest: More than 25,000 students participated in acting and history workshops there this year, and 120,000 visitors have paid about $6 each since August 1994 to walk through the Globe construction site.

Holden, who has had a long career as a theater builder, says the Globe has things to teach actors and audiences alike:

“For 200 years, editors have worked on Shakespeare’s text, but among actors nobody has worked to his space. These will not be museum performances. They will teach us more about the plays and about the special relationship between actors and audience.”

In a West End performance in London, Holden notes, there can be as many as 280 spotlights, each helping make the actors’ and writer’s points. Scenery, like costumes, establishes character. In film, a close up can capture a mood. None of that will be possible on Shakespeare’s new stage.

Actors will have to rely more on body language and project larger-scale acting at a louder vocal pitch. Moreover, they will be very close to at least some of the audience members, able to see how the ticket-buyers are reacting to them.

Holden expects the Globe to provide a noisy, active audience that will heckle, laugh and groan as audiences did in Shakespeare’s day.

“The theater will be a kind of gymnasium for the imagination. I hope we have a carnival atmosphere rather than a restraining one,” said actor Mark Rylance, who will become the Globe’s first artistic director.

It is early times yet, but Rylance has some convincing to do. He now is directing and starring near London in a “Macbeth” that is set in a cultists’ village. To reviewers’ dismay, actors wear saffron robes, and--horrors!--speak mainly in American accents.

“The Globe already is in trouble--academic squabbling about its authenticity and actors and directors complaining of serious acoustic and sight-line problems. If Rylance offers work like this, we can look forward to a fiasco of monumental proportions,” says London critic Charles Spencer.

There is also the question of another $10 million that must be found if the overall project is to be completed by century’s end.

Globe chief Holden is undaunted.

For now, he says with a twinkle, the turn-the-corner Arts Council grant has him feeling as ebullient as Gonzalo in “The Tempest”: “Oh rejoice beyond a common joy! And set it down with gold on lasting pillars” (Act 5, Scene 1).*