As You Like It (23/09/10, WYP)

Shockingly I haven't been to the Playhouse since July! But then it is closed over the summer... We remedied this last Thursday when we went to see a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, one of this plays that I was not at all familiar with going in. I'm often a bit trepidatious about seeing Shakespeare without having studied the play in detail, so I was happy to say that As You Like It was pretty straight forward to understand and follow, although there were a couple of passages where the significance passed me by - this didn't stop me enjoying the performance. 

I still can't make my mind up into what category the play fits. I suppose since no one dies at the end it's not a tragedy, and it's quite funny, so it's probably a comedy, although it does take a while for the funny to kick in, though that could be down to getting the plotting sorted. The play concerns a number of relationships and pairings, and a large dose of cross dressing as cousins Rosalind and Celia run away to the Forest of Arden, the former disguising herself as a man to evade capture. At the same time, banished Orlando finds himself in the same forest, and pining for the fair Rosalind, whom he meets in her disguise, so she has a bit of fun with him. There's also a deposed duke, a melancholy wanderer and a few other couples wandering around the forest, so it gets pretty busy. 

Sadly, the theatre was only about a third full and we found ourselves to be the only people sat on the front row, actually on the stage! It was a bit weird at first, but as the play went on and I found myself absorbed in Shakespeare's language, I came to appreciate it and it felt like we were part of the action. The play was faultlessly acted and directed, and there was much humour in both the words and the performances, Bruce MacKinnon as the fool Touchstone in particular added much comedy to his words. Vanessa Kirby, playing Rosalind, was undoubtably the star of the show, she was utterly magnetic. The rest of the cast were top notch, and I recognised Alice Haig and Connie Walker from the recent WYP production of Hay Fever, and eventually realised that Orlando was played by Nathan Wright, who was Annie's bar manager in series 2 of Being Human! It was especially nice being right at the front when he and Ivanno Jeremiah got topless to 'wrestle'... As You Like It then - I liked it very much.