AS YOU LIKE IT To 10 October.
London
AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s Globe 21 New Globe Walk Bankside SE1 9DT In rep to 10 October 2009.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS 020 7401 9919/020 7087 7398.
www.shakespeares-globe.org
Review by Carole Woddis 16 July.
Brightness wins out.
If you care to think of it that way, there are dark forces at work within Shakespeare’s sublime comedy As You Like It. Thea Shurrock doesn’t shirk from reminding us of the fact that behind this most appealing ode to love’s beauty and madness lies treachery, opening her revival with black-draped pillars and the usurping Duke Frederick, also all in black, being `crowned’ with sombre solemnity.
Now and again, those darker echoes shatter the sunlight created by Thurrock’s sunny production, making graphic the play’s underlying, serious exploration of courtly duplicity and country honesty, not to mention simplicity versus cruel wit. But mostly, this is one of the happiest productions we’ve seen in many a long year.
So often, As You Like It gets cloaked in heavy metaphorical symbolism. In the Globe’s embracing, populist setting, Shurrock has rightly gone for warmth, humour, and clarity. I can’t remember the last time the speaking of Shakespeare’s lines came across so clearly. Or induced so much unforced laughter.
In a company of equals, all contribute, not least Naomi Frederick and Jack Laskey who make Rosalind and Orlando unusually well suited. But they are beautifully backed up by Laura Rogers’s outstanding Celia, underlining her role as Rosalind’s aide-de-camp with delicious small, side-long looks and timing. And Dominic Rowan, whose Touchstone grows in brazen confidence, playing the audience like an angler and being rewarded with landing them, hook, line and sinker. There’s also a gorgeously original Audrey from Sophie Duval – slow without being bovine.
As for Jaques, the prince of melancholy, his is the role habitually that sounds the discordant note. With his languid verbal extravagance, Tim McMullan conveys lush decadence rather than a damaged, dyspeptic spirit - or the deep hypocrisy once memorably conjured by Bette Bourne at Regent’s Park’s Open Air Theatre.
Shurrock’s vision remains, though, irresistible - enjoyable and straightforward (no post-modern sexual ambiguity here) whilst making the best possible use of the Globe’s unique, increasingly peerless space. There’s simply nowhere else that, at its best, so completely combines performer and active audience participation to create true theatre. All in all, sheer delight.
Duke Frederick: Brendan Hughes.
Orlando: Jack Laskey.
Adam: Trevor Martin.
Oliver: Jamie Parker.
Rosalind: Naomi Frederick.
Celia: Laura Rogers.
Touchstone: Dominic Rowan.
Le Beau: Gregory Gudgeon.
Charles: Sean Kearns.
Duke Senior: Philip Bird.
Amiens: Peter Gale.
Corin: Sean Kearns.
Silvius: Michael Benz.
Jaques: Tim McMullan.
Audrey: Sophie Duval.
William: Gregory Gudgeon.
Sir Oliver Martext: Peter Gale.
Phebe: Jade Williams.
Hymen: Ewart James Walters.
Lords: Gareth Bennett Ryan, Michael Jarvis.
Director: Thea Shurrock.
Designer: Dick Bird.
Composer: Stephen Warbeck.
Musical Director: Rob Millett.
Movement: Glynn MacDonald.
Voice/Dialect work: Jan Haydn Rowles
Choreographer: Fin Walker.
Fight director: Kevin McCurdy.
Text work: Giles Block.
2009-07-22 05:05:21