As You Like It is a bit of a mad old cornucopic delight. It has everything
Shakespeare has to offer – political intrigue, danger, love, mistaken identity,
a smattering of philosophy, a few songs, (not to mention a spot of
cross-dressing and disguise), and it is full of the kind of whimsy and
mad-logic that Shakespeare specialises in. In many ways, it’s not so much
concerned with a complex plot, or a plot’s complexities (as, say, in Hamlet or Twelfth Night), but rather the interactions and relationships between
characters, the ways in which these interactions explore the play’s themes and
issues including (but not limited to) love, identity, and self-expression.
Bell Shakespeare’s current production of As You Like
It is a strange old beast. Played out against a
backdrop of old canvas dropsheets, with several concealed exits and entrances
(as befits the oft-quoted set-piece speech), it is characterized by a peculiar
languid energy, a strange “holiday humour” where time slows, love is professed,
declared and role-played with varying success, and magic can happen if only
they’d let it. Directed by co-artistic director Peter
Evans, this Arden is full of ideas, as are all his
other productions, but somewhere in the transition from the page to the stage,
some of Shakespeare [and Rosalind’s] effervescence is lost, and I don’t think
it finds it again, if at all.
