Stefanie C Peters

The set is bare, when the audience enters, leaving you to wonder what sort of Arden this is that director Michael Boyd and the RSC designers have created. It changes as the play changes—from court to forest, from winter to summer and desperate hunger and poverty to celebration, from the dark heavy costumes of Elizabethan England to something approaching modern dress.

Forbes Mason’s wild-haired Jaques comes to Duke Senior almost moaning about ‘A fool, a fool! I have seen a fool’. He doesn’t laugh, he is not so exultant. He reflects the Boyd’s dark forest; he is a man caught between wishes, unable to be a fool but uncomfortable as a melancholic. As he speaks, it is as if every line is added on in desperation to make Duke Senior laugh. He cannot do it.

Richard Katz’s Touchstone enters in a straight jacket, with a clown’s ruff and overlong shoes. His wild hair marks him as Jaques’s rival, but it is obvious both that his sort of clowning come completely naturally to him, that he could say anything and make it funny, and that Jaques is wildly jealous.

If Boyd emphasizes hunger, poverty, and desperation in Shakespeare’s play, he also plays up the sparkling wit and laughter, especially in Katy Stephens’ Rosalind. Stephens captures perfectly the quick-thinking garrulous Rosalind. She keeps talking and talking, saying whatever comes into her head, so long as it keeps Jonjo O’Neill’s Orlando near her. Whenever she shares the stage with him, whether as Rosalind or in her disguise as Ganymede, she and O’Neill look at each other with a thrilling intensity of passion.

But she nearly has to sacrifice her friendship in order to find her love: Mariah Gale’s Celia sits and looks on for much of the play, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning. She is unable to enjoy much of the delights of Arden, torn apart as she is by love of her father and horror at his actions. For her, Arden is a place of frightening, dark dreams. She reacts angrily when her friend appears to be willing to turn her back on everything—friendship, womanhood—for a courtship that doesn’t really exist as long as she wears trousers.

By the end of the play the cruel winter is replaced by a summer of courtship. The bare backdrop has been opened up. Young men and women lean out of it, their dark Elizabethan dress having slowly transformed to light colourful clothing. Balance and laughter are restored as couples begin to pair up. The desperate shepherd of the beginning has been transformed to Hymen, god of marriage, bedecked with rainbow-coloured ribbons. Boyd’s production is exultant, seeking to prove that love will conquer anything.

As You Like It plays in repertoire at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 18 April – 3 October 2009.