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As You
Like It review by
Emily Koch
The Swan Theatre, Stratford
Saturday,
November
8
Stratford’s Swan has played
perfect host to Gregory Thompson’s RSC directorial debut of As You Like It
for the past few months, and I caught his simple but compelling
interpretation of Shakespeare’s typically complex comedy in its final
performance. The consistently fine performances carried the audience
through a play of love, friendship and atonement effortlessly – a
particular feat with As You Like It, being a play that can be difficult to
realize.
The production welcomed an uncasted performer – a blameless butterfly – to
the stage at the opening of the play. The insect’s dalliances on stage
were inevitably distracting and delayed my realisation that Orlando’s
(Martin Hutson) lines prior to his brother’s entry are not in fact
scripted as ‘when he turns up, I’m going to be very cross. Very cross.
It’s the last one and he’s not here.’ The audience chuckled away
conspiratorially, though clearly delighted that things were going wrong,
and welcomed the belated Oliver to stage with rapturous applause. The
cheerful atmosphere didn’t last long, as Aaron Neil, playing the malicious
de Boys brother Oliver, took his cruel characterization to a new level and
stamped on the butterfly as it rested at the fore of the stage. Those in
the front row of the Swan’s intimate seating arrangement were left at
eye-level to a pair of fractured wings – causing one toddler to burst into
tears. Despite an eventful first scene, the production soon settled and
was a great success.
Just as I was thinking perhaps this production would be an essentially
more traditional one than an audience can expect at today’s increasingly
modern RSC, the players imaginatively took the form of the Forest’s trees
on which Orlando pinned his sonnets, and then dropped to the floor and
masticated and bleated as the sheep of Arden’s pastures.
Nina Sosanya wowed the audience in her spirited and witty deliverance as
Rosalind, one of Shakespeare’s stronger and more developed female
characters. Other outstanding performances included John Killoran’s fool
Touchstone, with his Eric Morecombe-esque mannerisms, and Daniel
Brocklebank’s Silvius, one of this production’s many hilariously
welsh-accented shepherds.
By this point in the run, all transitions were very smooth, the sense of
camaraderie strong and performances well-honed and impressive, whether as
sheep or otherwise.
© Emily Koch
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