Pursued by a chair
Shakespeare let his hair down here, and this version of ‘As You Like It’ gives him a Mohican. By
As You Like It
DESIGNER Lizzie Clachan’s set for the National Theatre Live production of As You Like It is a long way from the traditional rural idyll. The play opens in a steel-and-glass office with a particularly nasty polyester carpet, forming a determinedly modern and slightly awkward prologue to the main action, which takes place in the forest. Clachan’s scene change is one of the most audacious, brilliant and breathtaking pieces of design I’ve ever seen. The action is astonishingly speedy, almost filmic in its rapid movement.
This is a sparky, funny production. At around the halfway mark we begin to realise that it is a very silly play indeed. It is classic farce, which means tremendous fun from beginning to end. If you don’t know the plot, it involves a girl dressed up as a boy who persuades the boy she’s in love with to pretend she’s a girl so he can practise wooing. There is a singing clown and there are sheep, baaa-rilliantly played by the whole cast on all fours in woolly jumpers.
Some performances are better than others, but you’re in safe hands with Rosalie Craig’s incisive and clever Rosalind. Her quick-witted friendship with wide-eyed, quirky Patsy Ferran as Celia almost overshadows the central romance, but Joe Bannister’s Orlando is so likeable and bumbling, he makes their love believable.
Don’t enter the cinema bowing your knee with reverence for the Bard in this, the 400th year since his death. Grab a box of popcorn, settle in and prepare to laugh uproariously at this witty romp through the most original forest you will ever see.
As You Like It is at Cinema Nouveau in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town today at 2.30pm and on Wednesday and Thursday at 7.30pm.