Review: AS YOU LIKE IT, Theatre Royal Bath
Photo credit: Marc Brenner
Director Ralph Fiennes, in the second play of his Theatre Royal Bath season, concentrates his cast on speaking the lines with great precision and clear enunciation, carefully phrased and bringing great clarity to the meaning of every line. This production of Shakespeare’s 1599 play As You Like It may not have the stripped back joyousness of the RSC’s open-air production in 2024, but the full play (running for nearly three hours including interval) is executed with some of the finest delivery of Shakespeare’s words, a combination of prose and verse, that we have heard in recent years.
It is, of course, an unlikely tale of banished folk and romantic entanglements in the Forest of Arden with a happy ending of multiple marriages and that is what earns it the classification of comedy. However, it does feel a play of two halves with the first act a rather dry, static, and serious set up of the characters and the court of Duke Frederick, and the second, a more amusing romp through the Forest with all its absurd situations and relationships.
The central part of Rosalind, here played by a delightful Gloria Obianyo, of course plays with gender excessively and would have obviously originally been a boy playing a woman pretending to be a man acting as a woman. She delivers the final speech direct to the audience with “it is not the fashion to see a lady the epilogue… if I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me”. Here, it seems a fitting conclusion as we have enjoyed her playful portrayal of Ganymede (while in disguise in the Forest) seducing Orlando (Charlie Rowe) while asking him to pretend she is Rosalind. That seduction is the best scene in the play. It is made all the more amusing by the fact that we can all see through her thin disguise as the Duke Senior (Patrick Robinson) notes “I do remember in this shepherd boy some lively touches of my daughter’s favour”.
She is matched in a wonderful double act by Amber James as Celia who accompanies her to the Forest as Aliena and rings every comic nuance, grimace and aside from the situation and beautifully conveys her instant attraction to Oliver (Matt Gavan). Curiously she becomes more comical, animated and quirky than the traditional clown of the play, Touchstone (Dylan Moran) mainly because his comedy background does not equip him with the ability to deliver his lines with the same accuracy as the rest of the cast. Imogen Elliot also have great presence and comic timing as the shepherdess Phebe who falls for Ganymede while being chased by Silvius (Ethan Thomas), in a silly but fun subplot.
Hovering in the background is the melancholy Jacques who delivers the most famous speech of the play, “All the world’s a stage” with its seven ages of man. Fiennes builds on the gender mix up by casting Harriet Walter as the Lord attending on Duke Senior, addressed throughout as a man. Somehow the character fades into the background as a quite observer without the presence and delivery of Trevor Fox who played the role in the recent RSC version.
Bob Crowley has a reputation for big stage designs but here, it is very muted with white gauze onto which focussed images of the court and forest are projected and poor masking to the wings as if creating a fluid setting that constantly reminds us, we are on a stage rather than transporting to a more mystical fantasy world. The music and score by Ilan Eshkeri has a pleasant folky rural feel as if amusing themselves around the campfire without being memorable or adding much to the narrative. The costumes are modern with dull colours which barely distinguish status within the court.
What is wonderful and feels so fresh and exciting about this production are the three young central actresses playing Rosalind, Celicia and Phebe. They dominate the show with delightful characterisations and great comic timing and sweep us along as they interact and manipulate the men they meet. It is just as we like it.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
As You Like It plays at Theatre Royal Bath until 6 September, with further info here.