As You Like It - Shakespeare's Globe (Review)
Review by Oli Burley
SLICK, mischievous and riotous fun, Thea Sharrock’s As You Like It is gripping stuff.
Jack Laskey’s mop-haired Orlando is instantly affable as he wrestles his way into the heart of Rosalind (Naomi Frederick) by winning a grappling match against the odds.
The superbly-choreographed action spills off the stage into the yard and from that point on Sharrock has the groundlings’ attention in a tight full nelson.
Frederick helps to lock in that hold with a spirited portrayal of Rosalind, the daughter of banished Duke Senior (Philip Bird).
Disguised as a boy while she tracks down her father abroad in the Forest of Arden, Frederick wears her male persona well without ever forsaking the vulnerability of her sex.
Feisty in love, she can barely contain her mirth when she chances upon the unsuspecting Orlando and cheekily counsels him in the art of wooing, but then rails passionately when her beau hops off to dine with the duke.
The petulant Celia (Laura Rogers) assists Rosalind in her plotting and the pair’s teenage jollity contrasts sharply with the angst of lovelorn, banished Orlando.
With his hopes of a union with Rosalind seemingly gone, his countless love poems fall from the upper galleries of the Globe and drift uneasily into the ether – a touching moment in a production largely un-littered by props.
But other performances will live longer in the memory, most prominently Dominic Rowan’s amusing Touchstone and Tim McMullan’s rich and sonorous Jacques, who lounges and roams around the Globe as if he owns the place.
Rowan makes something of a superior jester: well-spoken, his keen, courtly observations regularly strike home – none more so than in his abrupt put down of William (Gregory Gudgeon) – and his energetic antics constantly provoke mirth because he plays, rather than is, a fool.
McMullan’s lackadaisical musings are the antithesis to Rowan’s dynamism but no less effective, even if his ‘seven ages of man’ speech is rather lost.
In the relaxed environs of the Forest of Arden where Duke Senior is quite literally unruffled and the lulling songs of Amiens (Peter Gale) soothe the sores of banishment that is not so surprising.
Even the stage’s pillars, which were draped in black at the pre-text ‘coronation’ of the sinisterly-smooth Duke Frederick (Brendan Hughes), melt into the chilled, natural mood by becoming sturdy trees.
Look past the plot’s contrivances – Duke Frederick’s change of heart is almost absurd – and this is a play packed full of linguistic artistry which the cast exploits to the full.
Be warned if you are sat in the upper galleries, though, as the action in the yard will often vanish out of view, but hopefully some of the best dancing you’ll see at a wedding reception will prove ample compensation.
In rep until October 10: for tickets call 020 7401 9919 or visit www.shakespeares-globe.org