*** Review: An entertaining but straightforward As You Like It is on at the RSC’s Holloway Garden Theatre until 1st September
Careful what you wish for.
Over the past year or so, we’ve become accustomed to the RSC taking a liberty or two with dear old Shakespeare. His Julius Caesar was brutally disrespected, his Tempest gender-reinterpreted and his Merchant Of Venice politically hijacked to name but a few. And each was inevitably greeted with suspicion bordering on horror by those who prefer their Bard a mite more trad and familiar.
Also, it shouldn’t escape mention that the last time As You Like It graced the Stratford stage, which was in 2023, it was presented as a play within a play – with an old cast reunited – so essentially kidnapped and messed-about-with by pensioners. Now whether you buy into the varied justifications for these off-piste productions or not, and whether you are thrilled or troubled by the outcomes, you need harbour no fears whatsoever that you will be conflicted over this one.
Director Brendan O’Hea’s As You Like It couldn’t be any straighter if you stretched it out on a rack and ironed it. All temptation to rogue interpretation has been resolutely resisted. No horses have been frightened, no apple carts overturned. Which probably sounds like music to the ears of the sticklers amongst us – and there’s plenty of music to be had as it happens, the cast grabbing an instrument and serenading us at the drop of every hat.
In actual fact, contrary to trend, the sole modification applied to the way the play was originally written and presumably meant to be performed is that it has been trimmed to a tidy 80 minutes so audience bum-ache and intricate plot bamboozlement are politely minimised.
Which is all well and good and greatly appreciated. But… As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s shall-we-say clumsier, less well-crafted plays, kind of hashed together from other plots so it can stomach a little enhancement to satisfy a modern audience. Although there’s very little anyone could do to distract from the cobbled-up nature of the multi-matrimonial finale and given that Letty Thomas’ Rosalind and Christina Tedders’ Bo-Peep-esue Celia are both perfectly delightful, it’s still baffling that not more is made of the play’s reliance on cross-dressing and gender confusion. Indeed, it seems positively remiss in this time of such fierce debate about the sanctity of the sexes that this production has nothing to say about it beyond the fact that this is how the plot plays out.
The production’s most enthusiastically received comic moment is literally accidental in that Luke Brady, who plays Orlando, the principal male love interest, has messed up his ankle and so acts his part throughout winningly in a chair off to the side of the stage. This frees Peter Dukes to perform the wrestling match solo, biffing himself in the goolies, strangling himself etc, mugging it up for all he’s worth, which gets the crowd howling.
As for the comedy implied in the original text; it’s not strictly their fault but both Duncan Wisbey as Touchstone and Trevor Fox as Jacques are really surplus to requirements plot-wise, the former too Only Fools And Horses and the latter too tiresomely Victor Meldrew for my taste, the famous “All The world’s a stage…” speech notwithstanding.
More could surely be made, too, of the outdoor situation of the Holloway Garden seeing as the action takes place mainly in the fictional Forest Of Arden. In 2021, Philip Breen’s Comedy Of Errors had one actor rushing into the arena soaking wet pretending to have fallen in the nearby Avon. There are no such locational quips played out here, though the occasional honking of the swans heard from the riverbank do add a little to the atmosphere.
The afternoon and early evening stagings suggest this As You Like It is aimed at families with young ‘uns so that may explain the production’s slight lack of ambition. But theatre, and all the arts in general, are under the cosh at the moment, being starved of funding, considered an unessential luxury. In the face of such financially-driven philistinism, it’s my contention that any occasion where the arts are given a platform should make the most of it, take some sort of stand, speak out boldly, make its claim as a force for good, or change, or comment or whatever. In other words, play it like it’s your very last chance.
This As You Like It frolics along charmingly enough but, though I left warmly entertained, I wish it had challenged us a little more.
Three stars
