THEATRE REVIEW: AS YOU LIKE IT
8 Jun'10

Shakespeare classic goes surreal

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

STRATFORD — There’s a forest filled with dreams and dreamers, art and artifice, newly sprung to life here on the banks of the Avon River. It is, of course, the legendary Forest of Arden, as dreamed onto the stage of the Festival Theatre by set designer Debra Hanson and artistic director Des McAnuff to play host to the Stratford Festival’s latest production of AS YOU LIKE IT.

Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy launched the 2010 edition of the Stratford Festival on Monday night. And if it pays more than passing homage to the surrealist world as imagined by Magritte and Dali and their ilk, well, so much the better, for that is the very world in which director McAnuff has chosen to set it.

It is the world of the 1920s — a world where twisted and often repressive political regimes and exciting new artistic philosophies sprang up and, for a time, lived however uneasily side by side. The politics of that world are reflected in a court ruled by a Kaiser-esque Duke Frederick, played by Tom Rooney. He’s a twisted little man who has snatched his dukedom from its legitimate inheritor, his brother, and has banished that brother and his court to the Forest of Arden, where they eke out a living among the rustics.

So when Orlando (played by Paul Nolan), the much-abused youngest son of a deceased nobleman, runs afoul of the usurping Duke in his attempt to find his own fame and fortune, it is to that forest he repairs as well, there to nurture his new but unrequited love for the Duke’s niece, Rosalind (played by Andrea Runge).

So besotted is Orlando, he fails to realize that Ganymede — the young man who, with his sister, befriends Orlando and tries to help the young lover sort out his feelings for Rosalind — is in fact Rosalind in disguise. The real Rosalind has fallen from Ducal favour and fled from the court herself, in company with her cousin, Celia (played by Cara Ricketts).

This is merely the first of a bouquet of romances that flourish in this magical forest, as noble and peasant, courtier and country girl, rub shoulders in the creation of their own brave and fair new world. The loving couples include Ben Carlson’s Touchstone and Lucy Peacock’s Audrey, Rickett’s Celia and Mike Shara’s Oliver, and Ian Lake’s beautifully besotted Silvius and Dalal Badr’s under-played Phoebe. And while these lovers woo and are wooed, life unfolds in a rich tapestry under McAnuff’s direction, blending Hanson’s design with the costuming of Dana Osborne and the lighting design of Michael Walton.

Happily, this is a McAnuff visibly more at peace with the unique demands of the Festival’s thrust stage, but, on a less positive note, it is also a McAnuff still clearly in thrall to a concept that will always trump character and plot considerations. For while he weaves the music of Justin Ellington and Michael Roth into a memorable sound bed and draws fine work from many of his principals — and a supporting cast that includes Randy Hughson, Brian Tree, Sean Arbuckle, Dan Chameroy and Mike Nadajewski — McAnuff is occasionally so blinded by his forest that he can’t see his trees.

It’s the kind of single-mindedness that puts performers at risk on a slippery, satin-covered floor and distracts an audience with unnecessary reflections in glass; that can and does leave a talented artist such as Brent Carver chained to a millstone of a concept in an otherwise lovely turn as the melancholy Jacques.

Worse, in a make-believe world where, as Bacharach wrote, there’s just one thing that there is just too little of, it leaves an otherwise talented ingenue like Runge so caught up in merely speaking Rosalind’s words that she fails to get to the loving heart of one of Shakespeare’s juiciest heroines.

What this Forest needs, finally, is less concept and a bit more love, sweet love.