As You Like It

Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon

By Karen Knowles

In Michael Boyd’s clever adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, interspersed with skits, songs and silly banter, what’s not to like – unless you object to seeing a rabbit being skinned on stage and decapitated?

Which, it must be said, was rather well done by the likeable shepherd Corin, played by Geoffrey Freshwater.

Corin represents all that is good in nature, but this is more than a just a pastoral fantasy intended to amuse and divert.

Corin, “shepherd to another man”, is so hard up he is unable to feed his guests and faces homelessness as soon as his master can sell the land. Scratch beneath the romantic idyll of the Forest of Arden and life is hard; fortunes change on a whim.

Jonjo O’Neill is entertaining as the tormented Orlando, overwhelmed by love, which he proclaims on dozens of notes scattered throughout the forest. He fled there to escape the murderous intent of his eldest brother, Oliver and is unaware that the object of his affections, Rosalind, is also hiding in the forest.

His love notes and songs are the subject of great amusement for court jester Touchstone (Richard Katz) who throws himself into the part, quite literally, with a touch of the manic John Cleese about him.

Rosalind, played by Katy Stephens, is excellent. Disguised as a boy after being banished from court by her uncle Duke Ferdinand, like her father before her, she makes Orlando pretend to woo her as a test of his love. The audience can sense her difficulty at playing a boy as she lets her femininity shines through

The timelessness of Shakespeare’s ironic wit was never more apparent than when Rosalind says: “I am a woman. When I think I must speak.” (In Shakespeare’s time of course the actor would have been a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man.)

The set and costumes are effective. The white backdrop, like a timber-framed wall with little doors which open here and there, and the black costumes of Duke Frederick’s court contrast sharply with the rainbow coloured wedding scene in the forest.

Trapdoors in the floor work well as the exiled Duke and his men pop up and down resembling a band of brothers on the battlefield, rifles at the ready, rather than the Robin Hood-style merry outlaws the audience might expect.

As the play romps towards a happy ending tyranny and jealousy are overthrown. Love conquers all – except for Forbes Masson’s pessimist Jaques.

His “Seven Ages of Man” speech is brilliantly performed as he pushes melancholy to the point of hilarity. But remains doggedly obsessed by the negative things in life – and “thereby hangs a tale”.