AS YOU LIKE IT. To 30 August.

Tour

AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare

Chapterhouse Theatre Company Tour to 30 August 2004
Ruins 2hr 50min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 July at West Lodge Park Hotel, Cockfosters

Battling with the breezes, grabbing attention from the picnics to create Shakespeare's idyll.It's said there are as many Hamlets as actors playing the part. Maybe the maths should factor in the number of audiences and the types of theatre space where the playing's done. Chapterhouse is a company annually touring several productions, making for a marathon duel with the British summer in a relentless series of one-night, open-air stands. It takes courage, keenness, and doubtless a stock of throat lozenges to survive.

Only a brief shower brought out the umbrellas on an early July Friday (the players never missed a beat) but only 24 hours before cancellation had been under consideration. Playing to a spread-out audience from a raised platform stage (its garden set a formal spot among the lush trees of the West Lodge Park's extensive grounds) actors vie for attention with picnic activities (Orlando set off to the Forest as Tesco smoked salmon was passing round in front of me). Shakespeare seen relaxed from a folding chair, glass of wine to the right, cigar in the left hand, isn't likely to be showing his darker side.

This, plus winds likely to scoot off with your voice in a different direction any moment, determines a straight-bat delivery. There are roughnesses in Chapterhouse's As You Like It. And, such a schedule not being the thing to attract older actors (with daily set up and striking of set besides the travel and playing) more senior characters are hard to accommodate.

It's a merry account in general, with bouncy tunes for the several songs. This may miss out on some moods, though the sheer hunger for the homeless in this forest is suggested by Orlando's frustrated search for berries, and Marcus Howden manages to counter his blithe appearance with some of Jaques' malcontent mind.

Simon Clark's production (which, rightly if unexpectedly in this tour of English rural retreats, reminds we are in the Ardennes rather than Warwickshire's Arden) has a good trio at its centre. Stephanie Nielson's Rosalind, having just been rudely snubbed by Duke Senior finds not only love at first sight but a sense of self-worth something to live for when she locks eyes with Orlando. Her moments of vulnerability in her love cure for Orlando, show it plainly answers her needs as much as his.

Heroic in looks and manner, and handling the verse with flexible confidence, Edward Harrison has a violent side, going for his bookish brother's neck with an armlock, yet surprisingly amateurish in the wrestling: only a nearby stool and a below-the-belt head-butt brings him out on top.

Then there's Sally Chase's Celia, too often left smiling into a book on the sidelines, but early on showing the carefree wit of someone who's not yet left a happy childhood's dreamland.

Elsewhere, fewer fussy attempts at comic business to decorate the script would help, though it would be a pity to lose the puppet ewe. Clearly genetically modified with transplants from that TV emu, and likely to attack any part of anyone in sight, it's a comic success whenever it appears: Enter, Upstaged by a Sheep.

And Clark achieves a fine moment as court transforms to forest, with the characters we've met crossing in confusion on their various pathways, merging into the country folk we're about to see; an image of the complex tracery in the play's emotional geography.

Duke Senior/Duke Frederick: Gregory A Smith
Amiens/Musician: Scott Baker
Jaques/Charles: Marcus Houden
Le Beau/Jacques/Sir Oliver Martext: Andy Mullins
Oliver: Matthew Brown
Orlando: Edward Harrison
Adam/William: James McQuillan
Touchstone: Mark Davies
Corin: Fraser Kellas
Silvius: Richard Baker
Rosalind: Stephanie Nielson
Celia: Sally Chase
Phebe: Rebecca Gadsby
Audrey: Jo Beynon
Hymen: Katherine Glenn

Director: Simon Clark
Designers: Rebecca Gadsby, Alec Fellows-Bennett
Composers/Musical Directors: Richard Main, Bryan Nevin, Libby Reeves

2004-07-10 10:56:23