THE CONTROVERSY AT THE GLOBE—-WAS IT “SNOBBERY” TO CHANGE ARTISTIC DIRECTORS? Emma Rice’s departure, like her original appointment, is very controversial, as can be seen in the comments quoted in the Hannah Furness article. The board of the Globe had no criticism of Rice’s productions. Furness says: “The board praised Rice for bringing in [to the] theatre new and diverse audiences’, admitting she has won ‘huge creative and critical acclaim, and achieved exceptionally strong box office returns'”. So the problem was not at the box office. The Globe “routinely reached 85 per cent capacity” even before Emma Rice arrived and apparently Rice improved on that.
Then was it unspoken dissatisfaction with the kind of Shakespeare that Rice was producing that led to the break?
Matt Trueman in The Telegraph in an article headlined “The Globe’s Freezing Out of Emma Rice Is Snobbery That Defies Commercial Sense” says that: “”The lighting has lit the place up like a stadium concert or a nightclub. Like it or not, the atmosphere in Rice’s Globe has been electric.” Trueman concludes that parting ways with Emma Rice is “straight-up snobbery”.