AS YOU LIKE IT

Directed by Samuel West

The Crucible Theatre Sheffield, 31 Jan – 24 Feb

Review by Paul Tyree, www.paultyree.co.uk

Sam West’s new production opens with the largest barest stage possible in The Crucible’s main hall. White floor, white walls an overturned white chair and mirrors around the back half of the stage giving the stage all the warmth of a psychiatric hospital. If this is the intention however, it’s a theme that is never explored. Instead we are treated to a procession of confused references firstly to the mafia, transvestitism and even what looks like a homage to Dr Strangelove as Duke Frederick whizzes about the stage in a wheelchair only just resisting the urge to throw his arm in the air and scream out in a German accent.

The first half of this play drags interminably and seems to do so with little cohesion. There can be no greater reassurance that others also felt the same as I heard a woman in the interval turn to her paramour and ask him “Can you explain it to me”.

Luckily the second half does pick up and the scenes between Rosalind and Orlando fizz along nicely with humour and sexual tension.

Eve Best as Rosalind (Shakespeare’s largest part for a woman) proves yet again what an excellent actress she is, whilst Sam Troughton plays the lovesick Orlando with a deft touch. Christopher Ravencroft as Duke Senior, however, is perhaps the best thing about this production. He has a relaxation about him and a surety that an audience can’t help but warm to. Lisa Dillon as Celia also stands out and after a shaky first half Harry Peacock as Touchstone provides some much needed laughter.

It is symptomatic of this production however that one of the funniest passages involves Touchstone doing a barely concealed impersonation of Laurence Olivier doing Richard III. Whilst funny, it is also jarring as it’s almost like admitting to the audience that this has been the limit of the company’s inventiveness.

The production could have also benefited from chopping about 20 – 30 mins, especially the last ten minutes of the second half.

Another problem with the play was that many of the scenes were delivered by actors that quite obviously weren’t at home in Shakespeare. There was a lot of ‘arm out, pointing towards the audience’ acting as they strode about the stage without really knowing why. It was almost as though they felt they had to do something, be it move or gesticulate or grimace, all to try and hide that they, perhaps, weren’t quite sure what they were talking about. No passage summed this up more adequately than ‘Jaques’ delivering the ‘All the World’s a Stage’ speech. Daniel Weyman made sure that he traversed from one side of the stage to the other, covering all three sections of the audience, his arm waving in the air delivering his lines like a lecturer that’s determined to get his point across. Frankly, however, had he sat down and simply delivered the speech it would have been far more powerful. It’s as if the actors forget that we can see them and they have to try too hard to be seen, (a thing Shakespeare warns us of in Hamlet).

All in all a lot of this production had the feel of something that a group of sixth formers would put together and considering that Michael Grandage also put this play on a few years ago at The Crucible every aspect of this production from the set, the costumes and even the need to put this play on at all smacks of laziness and a lack of ideas. It also shows why the press night was scheduled over a week into the run. Disappointing.