AS YOU LIKE IT. To 15 October.
Edinburgh
AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare
Royal Lyceum Theatre To 15 October 2005
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 5, 8 Oct 2.30pm
BSL Signed 5 Oct 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 0131 248 4848
www.lyceum.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 October
A happy account of a curative Arden.It's back to the gleaming corporate world of director Mark Thomson's first Lyceum Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 2 years ago for the opening scenes of this comedy. Shakespeare's court setting becomes a modern business conglomerate powerhouse. Where banging a fist angrily on a desk sets off the alarm-system (only knowing old hand Adam knows where to press for deactivation). And where company apparatchiks walk with pointless urgency, responding to the unheard orders of their ubiquitous electronic earpieces.
It's from this angular office layout, restricting movement all round, that Orlando and Rosalind separately flee to liberty and not to banishment. As the huge office wall slowly collapses, a contrasting society emerges. It's gentler, with filigree trees, and brightly autumnal rather than vernally green. And the small circular hillocks seem part of a united environment, rather than the divisive impact of the city's furnishings.
There's a calm, gentle quality to this production's world, caught even in the gentlemanly tones of the city's professional wrestler Charles. His mental equivalent in the Forest of Arden is the famously melancholy Jacques, who emerges in John Bett's considered performance as philosophically ruminative rather than bile-filled and sharp-toothed. There's a friendly appreciation in his arguments with Touchstone, played as frivolously fun-filled by Robin Laing, in a modern, brightly dotted version of motley.
It's also a tuneful show, with the forest rustics adding a fine voice to Amiens' purity of tone. The foul, sluttish side and the country stupidity is downplayed in favour of simple unsophistication. By the time of the denouement one of Shakespeare's most incredible plot-wraps repentant city types are highly believable, though the impact of Rosalind resuming her own female identity is muted amid the pervading kindliness.
Donald Pirie's Orlando is adequately romantic. But this is Rosalind's play she rightly gets Shakespeare's rare Epilogue and Emma Cunniffe portrays her with clear good sense and a fluidity of voice and movement that finds its proper environment in Arden. Lighter than usual for these Shakespearean days, perhaps missing the darker tones and detail, this show is a celebration of human scale and song - against the city machine.
Rosalind: Emma Cunniffe
Celia: Eilidh Macdonald
Audrey: Fiona Steele
Phebe: Julie Duncanson
Le Beau/Amiens: Richard Conlon
Orlando: Donald Pirie
Touchstone: Robin Laing
Jacques: John Bett
Corin/Jaques de Boys/Lord at Court: Malcolm Shields
Oliver: John Jack
Adam/Sir Oliver Martext: Thane Bettany
Duke Frederick/Duke Senior: Benny Young
Charles/Lord of Arden/William/Hymen: Benedict Relton
Silvius/Lord at Court: James Mackenzie
Director/Music: Mark Thomson
Designer: Gregory Smith
Lighting: Davey Cunningham
Movement: Malcolm Shields
Assistant director: Colin Brodie
2005-10-06 12:17:48