July 19, 2011
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful
wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that,
out of all whooping!
(Celia, Act III Sc ii)
If you only go to one outdoor Shakespeare all summer, make it this one. I am entirely ravished with the wonderfulness of this production, such that I warn you now I am going to rant and rave about it at great length. I never could get all that worked up about As You Like It before, but now I’ve seen the light and I understand the bewitching charm of it. I will try to be rational and explain why you should cough up £18 a ticket to see this.
First of all, the company of actors are outstanding – not only can they act superbly, but they can also all sing, play musical instruments, dance, fight, and make Shakespeare’s lines clear, funny, and moving. The wrestling match at almost the beginning of the play is a stunning piece of fight choreography, performed with immense conviction; it was but a taste of things to come. The style of acting is inventive, committed, physical, joyous. You actually do fall a little bit in love with everyone in this play, male, female, old, young, good, bad – they are all adorable.
Second, the music. AYLI has a whopping five songs in it, making it practically a musical. These have been newly set to different tunes and are performed with breathtaking harmonies and pretty instrumentation. Again, from the opening musical invocation to the audience to turn off their mobile phones, we were charmed and enchanted by the company’s musical virtuosity, a winning combination of wit, cheek and beauty.
Third, the location. I haven’t been to any of the previous productions in the Bod Quad, but like anyone who has ever worked in the Upper Reading Room I am aware that it is a simply magnificent amplifier of the human voice. How does this work on the inside of a big stone cube? I don’t know, but it does, superbly, and better than in a conventional theatre. Voices carry, but are not distorted by echoes; music pierces but in tranquil order. We had great weather luck yesterday evening, and the quad glowed in the late sun like the inside of a big gold bell (only square).
Fourth, the play. As the title suggests, Shakespeare felt constrained by the tastes of his audience to make old-fashioned romantic happy-endings to his comedies – to quote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jack shall have Jill, Nought shall go ill, The man shall have his mare again, And all shall be well. He indulged this taste but made it very clear that this is a convention and not something to be expected in the real world by making these denouements blatantly artificial and (sometimes) implausible and (occasionally) unsatisfactory.
AYLI is not one of the ‘difficult’ comedies seething with unresolved conflicts, but it does have a rather odd structure. Almost all the story happens in Act I. Once everyone has got to the Forest, the plot sort of stops and there are a couple of acts where nothing much happens except for very witty conversations about life, love, time, free will, philosophy, etc.. In the hands of inferior productions these scenes can be frightfully tedious – it’s hard, really hard, to bring them to life, to make them alive and relevant and funny for a modern audience. That’s what this production triumphantly succeeded in doing. There was not a moment’s ennui; the audience was wholly engaged, seduced really, one should say, into swallowing the wonderful fifth act solutions. The whole experience was simply joyous.
Fifth – Emma Pallant. It was a bold stroke to turn the character of Jacques into a woman, but it worked superbly well, largely thanks to this awesomely beautiful and charismatic actress. But it’s unfair to single her out – everyone was wonderful, really just wonderful. Enough ranting. Just go and see it – you won’t be sorry.
wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that,
out of all whooping!
(Celia, Act III Sc ii)
If you only go to one outdoor Shakespeare all summer, make it this one. I am entirely ravished with the wonderfulness of this production, such that I warn you now I am going to rant and rave about it at great length. I never could get all that worked up about As You Like It before, but now I’ve seen the light and I understand the bewitching charm of it. I will try to be rational and explain why you should cough up £18 a ticket to see this.
First of all, the company of actors are outstanding – not only can they act superbly, but they can also all sing, play musical instruments, dance, fight, and make Shakespeare’s lines clear, funny, and moving. The wrestling match at almost the beginning of the play is a stunning piece of fight choreography, performed with immense conviction; it was but a taste of things to come. The style of acting is inventive, committed, physical, joyous. You actually do fall a little bit in love with everyone in this play, male, female, old, young, good, bad – they are all adorable.
Second, the music. AYLI has a whopping five songs in it, making it practically a musical. These have been newly set to different tunes and are performed with breathtaking harmonies and pretty instrumentation. Again, from the opening musical invocation to the audience to turn off their mobile phones, we were charmed and enchanted by the company’s musical virtuosity, a winning combination of wit, cheek and beauty.
Third, the location. I haven’t been to any of the previous productions in the Bod Quad, but like anyone who has ever worked in the Upper Reading Room I am aware that it is a simply magnificent amplifier of the human voice. How does this work on the inside of a big stone cube? I don’t know, but it does, superbly, and better than in a conventional theatre. Voices carry, but are not distorted by echoes; music pierces but in tranquil order. We had great weather luck yesterday evening, and the quad glowed in the late sun like the inside of a big gold bell (only square).
Fourth, the play. As the title suggests, Shakespeare felt constrained by the tastes of his audience to make old-fashioned romantic happy-endings to his comedies – to quote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jack shall have Jill, Nought shall go ill, The man shall have his mare again, And all shall be well. He indulged this taste but made it very clear that this is a convention and not something to be expected in the real world by making these denouements blatantly artificial and (sometimes) implausible and (occasionally) unsatisfactory.
AYLI is not one of the ‘difficult’ comedies seething with unresolved conflicts, but it does have a rather odd structure. Almost all the story happens in Act I. Once everyone has got to the Forest, the plot sort of stops and there are a couple of acts where nothing much happens except for very witty conversations about life, love, time, free will, philosophy, etc.. In the hands of inferior productions these scenes can be frightfully tedious – it’s hard, really hard, to bring them to life, to make them alive and relevant and funny for a modern audience. That’s what this production triumphantly succeeded in doing. There was not a moment’s ennui; the audience was wholly engaged, seduced really, one should say, into swallowing the wonderful fifth act solutions. The whole experience was simply joyous.
Fifth – Emma Pallant. It was a bold stroke to turn the character of Jacques into a woman, but it worked superbly well, largely thanks to this awesomely beautiful and charismatic actress. But it’s unfair to single her out – everyone was wonderful, really just wonderful. Enough ranting. Just go and see it – you won’t be sorry.
