As You Like It
As You Like It, Playhouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House, February 5-March 1; ph: (+6 12) 9250 7777; for national tour details: www.bellshakespeare.com.au
The delightful lightness of touch evident in Bell Shakespeare's first outing of 2008 is partly about the ebullience of the play itself, partly the fresh energy of the young cast coupled with the characteristic verve director John Bell can often bring to Shakespeare's comedies. And it's also about the similarly effervescent physical lightness Jennie Tate always brought to her production and costume designs.
The sadness at Tate's sudden death, just days after Christmas as the actors began rehearsal, is made even more poignant by the gossamer wit and simplicity of the design: a virtually bare stage speckled with pink and red, a few bentwood chairs, a sheer backcloth of barely sketched trees and half a dozen sheer, similarly painted, drapes that are pulled back and forth as trees, doorways, hidey-holes and whatever else theaction demands. Realised, after Tate's death, by Julie Lynch, with unobtrusively effective lighting by Matt Scott, the setting is everything a Bell touring show has come to mean: economical, vividly imaginative, practical and magical by turns. The costumes, too, are delicious with a range of styles radiating from the Duchess's aspirationally chic court (Balkans-on-a-Saturday-night-in-the-1950s) and mincing militaristic French popinjays.
As You Like It needs a light touch: come down too heavily (with a 21st century take) on the sexual ambiguity, mixed and thwarted relationships and sheer playfulness of Shakespeare's masterpiece of 1599 and the life will be crushed out of it. On the other hand, the same fate awaits a production that simply plays up the possibility of farce and treats it as frippery. As You Like It is anything but and deserves a production as thoughtful and solidly grounded as this one. From the cheeky opening moments as the assembled cast play with the audience and the whole idea of getting under way, to the closing dance when, finally, all's well that ends well, Bell and his exceptional company tread an almost flawless path around all possible pitfalls.
The "story" of true love and true lust in all their permutations and pot holes, with boys being boys and girls being boys and girls being boys being girls, is initially simply absorbing - as the complex stitchery is cast on - and then exhilarating as the patterns begin to form and re-form like the riotous reels (music and soundscapes: Basil Hogios) that punctuate (and somewhat elongate) the second half. As the central pair of lovers, Saskia Smith and Stephen Phillips are heartstoppingly romantic as Rosalind and Orlando: the moment when they suddenly see each other for the first time is exquisite, crazily credible and to die for. Among the rest of the fine cast, Lexi Freiman is just as convincing as Rosalind's adored Cuz - Celia - and Jonathan Gavin as Orlando's brother Oliver makes the switch from oleaginous usurper to staunchly loving sibling in the twinkling of his big brown eyes. In a fine bit of dual-role playing, Camilla Ah Kin is a meanly haughty Duchess, yet comes into her own as tarty Audrey. Anna Houston makes a smack-worthy, petulant sulkpot Phoebe; Damien Ryan is equally persuasive as the worldweary Jacques, Ed Wightman is a motormouth fool (Touchstone) and the various fops, fools, dukes, shepherds and nymphos are well drawn by Julian Garner, Ed Wightman, Philip Dodd and Glenn Hazeldine.
According to John Bell, somewhere along the 35-venue, five month tour across NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, Canberra, Western Australia and Queensland, the 2,000,000th Bell Shakespeare Company audience member will take his or her seat. This is a remarkable statistic for the little company that would - and did - and does. And As You Like It is a production worthy of that celebratory milestone.
