AS YOU LIKE IT

by William Shakespeare
Performed by Chapterhouse Theatre Company
Williamson Park, Lancaster
Sunday 15 August 2004

Reviewed by Michael Nunn
Photography by John L Burkinshaw

or, As You Find It …

Unlike A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It is not performed anything like as often as it should be. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it is the relatively unfamiliar pastorale form of the tale, or just a contemporary quirk of fashion. In the past it has attracted actors of the calibre of Henry Irving and, in our time, Patrick Stewart, Vanessa Redgrave, Max Adrian and the wonderful Roy Kinnear, who hailed from this fair county.

So credit to Chapterhouse Theatre Company for adding it to their repertoire. That is one of the few plaudits, however, as I had serious reservations about this particular production.

The play has just as much humour (wit, filth and otherwise), pathos and general business as any of the other major comedies to enable any producer and director to make the piece leap and blossom into life in any number of ways and idioms. The dialogue of the resident fool, Touchstone, is on a par with the richness of the parts of Fabian in Twelfth Night, the Fool in King Lear and the rest of "Shakespeare's motley.'

It was not just the miscasting or woefully under-development of Touchstone. The nature of and necessity to the narrative of Jacques de Boys were hardly clear from the direction. For a start, his name should be pronounced Jay-Kez, or even Jakes, and this can add to the laughs: Jakes was current usage in Shakespeare's time as a slang term for the privy. It was not clear to me just what sort of a man he was meant to be, or even how his role in the development of the plot was significant. There are many different possible approaches here.

On re-reading the text since seeing the show, I was also disappointed at the number of missed chances for bawdry (As You Like It is very rich in filth and double-entendre). I felt that this production missed out on so many opportunities to highlight and make good theatre from the critical turns of the plot, and to develop the keystones of the individual characters. On a technical note, the lighting was placed too far back to give a clear view of the action as the darkness fell.

Chapterhouse has an enviable reputation in these columns for clear, vivid and vivacious story-telling. Yet, this key attribute and prime task of any production to animate the text into life was sadly underplayed and, in places, hardly in evidence at all. Perhaps their sudden corporate exponential expansion from two simultaneous summer touring shows last year to four this time has led to some thinning of the gloss.

Certainly the logistics, the behind-the-scenes operations and other vital tasks will have more than doubled with the additional work involved. Whatever the cause, As You Like It was certainly a distinct fall from grace and a disappointment at the relative absence of the excellences that have so far and so well fascinated and impressed this reviewer.

Yet …

As I do not subscribe to the usual merciless critical attitude of "Lo, with a spot I damn him' scenario and write the evening off completely, I am entirely happy to render praise where it is due.

It was particularly pleasing to note that the audience, including the children, certainly picked up on those not infrequent moments which were well done, and the audience participation was for the most part ingenious and highly entertaining. The delightful music, too, helped underpin the sense of unreality we should feel in the detached and fantastical environment of the fairy-tale forest.

Further, there were indeed some fine comic moments with the rustics in the Forest of Ardën (in this production, amusingly pronounced like the French pâté) and likewise with the banished Duke Senior's Robin Hood-like merry men. There was also some fine playing, visually and verbally, from the cousins Rosalind and Celia, played by Stephanie Nielson and Sally Chase respectively.

Richard Baker, too, sparkled again as an insatiable and testosterone-raddled Silvius, well-balanced by Jo Beynon's garrulous and slapper-ish Audrey. Orlando, the ‘sexy goodie' of the piece, was also sensitively and passionately played by Edward Harrison.

Yet the ‘but' remains. Ah well, you can't please ‘em all. My disappointment is all the harder since I know Chapterhouse can deliver the goods.

I am sure that the promised Henry V and new Romeo and Juliet next year will be back to the rare and unusual excellence on which Chapterhouse has formed its enviable reputation.

Copyright © 17 August 2004
Michael Nunn; John L Burkinshaw