As You Like It (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: As You Like It Tom Ue As You Like It Shakespeare's Globe, 2009 Thea Sharrock offered a thoughtful, intelligent, and energized production that made productive use of Shakespeare's Globe and Dick Bird's designs (Duke Frederick's grim court was transformed into the Forest of Arden in a magical moment), that incorporated an excellent score by Academy Award-winning composer (of Shakespeare in Love no less) Stephen Warbeck, and that brought together the terrific performances of Naomi Frederick (Rosalind), Laura Rogers (Celia), Jack Laskey (Orlando), Tim McMullan (Jacques), and Dominic Rowan (Touchstone). Frederick effectively brought out Rosalind's humor, cleverness, and assertiveness—particularly in her remonstrance against Duke Frederick's banishment—and her chemistry with Rogers's Celia gave plausibility to their joint escape from the court. Sharrock made a number of interesting and thought-provoking decisions, notable among them the inclusion of Oliver as an audience member in the hilariously-rendered wrestling match. What was particularly striking about Sharrock's production, for this viewer, was Laskey's performance of Orlando, one which showed the character in its true complexity. With his hair endearingly tousled, Laskey seemed wonderfully naïve and unable to represent himself, as could be gathered from his bad poetry. Indeed, after the wrestling match, despite lots of mouthing, he failed to thank Rosalind for her chain, lending weight to his aside: "My better parts / Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up / Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block." Yet, this same Orlando betrayed a mischievous streak as early as 1.1 when he engaged with Oliver in a dirty fight. This Orlando recognized Rosalind as early as the marriage scene of 4.1, so that both his question "But will my Rosalind do so?" and his subsequent meeting with her in 5.2 served as proposals, however indirectly. Early in the play, Charles the wrestler asked Oliver to dissuade Orlando from fighting in the wrestling match: "Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb, shall acquit him well." Charles punned on the term credit's meanings of "the attribute of being generally believed or credited" and "the estimate in which the character of a person (or thing) is held." If the match is a means through which a competitor can damage, establish, maintain, or further his name [End Page 63] and reputation, we were constantly reminded of it by a chalk circle drawn on the stage near the start of the play. This circle, like Sharrock's production as a whole, foregrounded the centrality of character formation to our understanding of Shakespeare's deceptively-simple comedy, and of its seemingly-endless possibilities in performance. Tom Ue University College London Copyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press