As You Like It – RSC 2019 | Peter Viney's Blog

As You Like It – RSC 2019

As You Like It
By William Shakespeare

Directed by Kimberley Sykes
Set design by Stephen Brimson Lewis
Music by Tim Sutton

Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Wednesday 10th April 2019, evening

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CAST

David Ajao- Orlando, youngest son of Roland de Bois
Charlotte Arrowsmith – Audrey, a goatherd
Patrick Bennan – Corin, a Shepherd
Graeme Brookes – Charles , a wrestler/ Forester
Antony Byrne- Duke Senior / Duke Frederick
Richard Clews – Adam, a gardener to the de Bois family
Tom Dawze- William, in love with Audrey
Amelia Donkor- Sylvia, a shepherdess in love with Phoebe
Laura Elsworthy- Phoebe, a shepherdess
Sandy Grierson – Touchstone, a fool
Emily Johnstone- Amiens , attendant to Duke Frederick / Le Beau, attendant to Duke Senior
Karina Jones – Martext, a clergywoman
Alex Jones- a lord
Sophie Khan Levy – Celia, Rosalind’s cousin
Lucy Phelps – Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke Senior
Sophie Stanton – Jacques, a traveler
Aaron Thiera – Jaques de Bois , middle son/ Dennis
Leo Wan – Oliver, eldest son of Roland de Bois

The play about the ardent lovers in the Forest of Arden. We were staying in the Arden Hotel, opposite the theatre, and spent the day west of Stratford, passing Mary Arden’s house – she was Shakespeare’s mother. Then we looked up at the wooded hill nearby and wondered if that had inspired the forest of Arden choice, and parked briefly in Henley-in-Arden. Weird place. Some 16th century architecture, wide High Street but not one of 30 or 40 vehicles would pause to let us reverse into a parking space, but sped up instead. In Bournemouth, by 4 or 5 cars someone would flash their lights and wait to let you reverse in.

The play has the extremes of reviews since I started this blog. The RSC version in 2013 was the best I’ve ever seen the play. It still is. The Globe version in 2018 was just about the worst professional production of Shakespeare I’ve seen. Among many disastrous choices at The Globe, the worst was to cast a deaf Celia, losing all the interaction between Rosalind and Celia. Thank goodness Celia was restored to normality here, and was also a study in first rate reactive comic acting from Sophie Khan Levy. A strong Celia is absolutely essential to the story.

Opening scene: Celia in pink (Sophie Khan Levy) with Rosalind (Lucy Phelps)

The concept revolves around ‘all the world’s a stage’ which was intoned through the public address system as the black curtains of the court scenes gave way to the piles of flats and platforms and revealed theatre back wall and ropes. Part of the concept was audience interaction, bringing audience members on stage and lighting the audience for long spells. The cast could turn lights up and down at a finger click, and start and stop the musicians in the same way.

Duke Frederick (Antony Byrne)

The magical switch to the forest was mainly achieved by costume. In the court we had stiff light grey suits, in Arden everyone got changed into ragged rustic gear. Antony Byrne switched from Duke Frederick to Duke Senior mid stage with a lot of humour as he got down to underpants. He was as good a duke as I’ve seen in both roles. Costume was modern, wildly so for the tartan trewed Touchstone. Only Celia wore full 16th century skirts but in fact there was innovative comic use made of them several times, most especially when she disguised herself as a rock.

The set had a platform right across at centre level, used a lot. The play opens with Orlando (David Ajao) on a swing. That and the platform across, and the visible drummer on the higher level platform, immediately conjured up Peter Brooks Midsummer Night’s Dream, not that it followed through. I thought the set was a lost opportunity. Too stark and dull for the court, too confused for the forest without any essential magic, and they kept the huge coup de theatre for the last five minutes when a wooden platform moved to reveal a theatre high puppet Hymen. Great, but the huge effort put into those five minutes would be better spread across the whole of the forest scenes. Similarly the whole cast dance was fabulous, but generally people appeared in twos and threes.

The final dance around the giant puppet of Hymen

The lead role of Rosalind was played by Lucy Phelps. With Celia, usually present and watching, that gave us three first rate performances at the heart of the play. David Ajao was laddish, but powerful in the wrestling scene, quite capable of carrying a tall Adam, and always lively with expressions. Lucy Phelps emphasized a boyish figure- we see Celia wrapping her chest on stage. She took the Ganymede meets Orlando scenes as flat out comedy, dancing, going into rap, gesturing. All three majors were great.

Oliver the evil brother (Leo Wan)

The nasty brother Oliver was also very good (Leo Wan) his comparative small size to Ajao made his venom come out strongly, and especially in instructing Charles the wrestler to cripple Orlando.

Rosalind as Ganymede (Lucy Phelps) with Orlando (David Ajao)

Touchstone was played large, and tall thin, Scottish by Sandy Grierson. New light was shed in lines – he interprets ‘Goth’ quite differently to Shakespeare, in the modern teen sense. It’s a swine of a role, as all punning clowns are, but he made sense of so many lines which have often been gabble in the past.

Touchstone (Sandy Grierson)

The tale of the lamb and the ram to Corin the shepherd being an example of great clarity replacing punning obscurity. Gesture helps! Corin was Welsh. Shakespeare would have approved. He liked comic Welshman.

Amiens (Emily Johnstone) with Rosalind. Organizing the wrestling match

There was gender switching. Some worked well, especially Sophie Stanton as Jacques (clowns and commentators tend to non gender specific) and Emily Johnston as a very funny Amiens, organising things for Duke Frederick, tripping over her heels. Both made any consideration that the gender is normally the other way fly out of your mind.

Jacques (Sophie Stanton)

Sophie Stanton’s ‘seven ages of man’ speech was taken with subtle weighting, after seeing so many flat out over dramatic versions. On the other hand, she played it enigmatic and wise, which was interestingly different, where the play intended a gloomy glum flat Jacques the tragic clown (a touch of Dad’s Army ‘we’re doomed!) to contrast with the rampant sets of lovers. Martext, the clergyman was OK as a clergywoman.

Rosalind (Lucy Phelps) with Silvia (Amelia Donkor). Phoebe (Laura Elsworthy) in background

However, casting Silvius as a woman, Silvia, was misguided. Amelia Donkor did the role very well, with her weepy lesbian crush on Phoebe, played by Laura Elsworthy as micro-skirted, busty and hilarious. Phoebe is a great role. She is at the best point of her life when sexuality and vibrancy carry her through. Hard rural work will take its toll soon. Phoebe’s randy heterosexual eyes are on what she believes is a man. Trouble is, the point at the end is Phoebe thinks she is going to marry a man, as she believes Rosalind disguised as Ganymede, to be a man. Ganymede says quite specifically he/she will marry no one but Phoebe if she is a man. Phoebe is let down by discovering Ganymede is really a female, and is horrified, so must then marry Silvius instead. But if you make Silvius female too, then what’s the problem? If she doesn’t mind the partner’s gender, then she would not have objected to Rosalind being female.

Celia – disguised as ‘Amalia’ (Sophie Khan Levy) – watching her reacting to the action was a highlight of the production for me

Audrey was deaf. With this role it didn’t matter much. First she was very good at comedy. Second, William acted as a translator to Touchstone and everything was vocalised, and they got humour from Touchstone’s attempts at sign language. Nothing of the plot was lost. At the Globe last year, a deaf major speaking part in Celia was ridiculous. I understand that it helps remove the invisibility of deaf people in mainstream situations. I still don’t see the theatrical point even in this restricted way. A deaf audience needs signing throughout. One deaf actor with a translator for a hearing audience is virtue signalling by the RSC. I understood when I was fifteen that short sight made a career as a pilot impossible and that teenage plumpness meant I was never going to play professional football. There is too much virtue signalling in the theatre in 2019.

Touchstone (Sandy Grierson)

We didn’t get rustic accents. Phoebe had slight Northern, but she should be really rural in accent. Obviously she doesn’t need to be Mummerset, but the accents of all the rustic swains should be noticeable and contrast to the court characters. Maybe not even rural, perhaps strong urban like Cockney or Salford or Scouser, but certainly a class contrast to our stranded nobility. However, when you’re into virtue signalling – deaf Audrey, lesbian Silvius, three different ethnicities for the brothers – then no doubt that would be considered classist. Why? They got humour out of Scots and very slight Welsh accents. But these are regional or national rather than social class accents, as was slight Northern.

Overall, it fell flat on its stark set, and lacked the sense of pastoral forest magic. We didn’t have the sense of weird stuff happening, events and people tumbling into view like Alice in Wonderland. It felt young and earnest in places where we wanted a touch of old hippy. We got newly pointed line humour in many places, but lost the entrancing verse – well, except for Jacques major speech. At two hours 40 minutes it could have benefitted from 10 minutes of cuts for me. It was as if the director watched Touchstone, Phoebe, Jacques, William and Audrey and felt ‘these actors are so funny and doing it so well that I can’t cut them anymore.’ Yes, they were, but still, when all was put together, some scenes needed more propulsion towards the conclusion. Sam Marlowe in the Times noted a ‘lack of pace and vim’ and Karen had said much the same, ‘leaden in parts.’ Ten minutes of astute cuts would improve that. That’s true of 90% of productions.

It’s the RSC. Face it, they never fall below a high professional standard of acting and production. This is full of ideas and things you haven’t seen in As You Like It before. We might complain about this or that, as we do, but you’re going to enjoy it. Three stars means ‘definitely worth seeing’ after all.

Overall, 3 stars *** (2013 RSC was five, 2018 Globe was one, so it’s in the middle for me)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ****

The eternal madness of desire, though, is infectiously relayed. Sandy Grierson’s fool Touchstone – camp, caustic and, with Scottish accent and tartan drainpipes, carrying shades of Billy Connolly – strews the stalls with glittery scraps as he becomes giddily attached to Audrey. And the evening goes full panto at the end with a giant-faced puppet of the god Hymen. Bonkers, at times brilliant, there’s a lot to like here, and a fair bit to love.

3 star
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard ***
Miriam Gillinson, The Guardian ***

Some of the elements in Sykes’s production are perhaps a little fussy. There’s an awful lot of gender switching, which initially feels fun and fitting – since much of the plot revolves around disguise and gender flips – but ultimately proves distracting. Without a clear reason for the gender-fluid casting, it becomes just another confusion – another plot twist to resolve – in an already fiendishly complex and plot-driven play. There’s just one gender twist that holds real weight, and that’s the decision to cast Jacques as a woman. Delivered by Sophie Stanton with a sort of nonchalant wisdom, Shakespeare’s most famous speeches suddenly sound new again

Natasha Tripney, The Stage ***
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage, ***

2 star
Sam Marlowe, The Times **