RSC As You Like It 2010

The RSC Trailer

Before you read the rest of this, take a look at the RSC's trailer for this production (click on the link above). Keep in mind that this is one of Shakespeare's comedies, in fact from what's sometimes called his "golden period," the sunniest ones he ever wrote.

I hate to break it to them, but it still turns out a comedy, even when you skin a dead rabbit on stage. Even when you put Touchstone into a straitjacket and crazyman pants. Even when songs that generally would be sung by Amiens and Touchstone are put into the mouth of noir-Jethro Tull costumed Jaques. Even when you make "The Lusty Horn" song into a nightmare sequence for Celia.

I mean, there are anxieties in this play, chief among them the Freudian (note anachronism) male anxiety about cuckolding, which the intelligence and female friendship of Celia and Rosalind do nothing to allay in the comic version. But nihilistic anxieties of the type that the changed stage business attempts aren't really convincing.

The structure and language are too strong to push against, even though the play with its "humorous" (in the Early Modern Renaissance sense of character determination) elements suggests a kind of dispositional determinism that gets subverted by the "conversion" plot. In fact, this interplay produces a kind of happy chaos in which anything can happen, and in which characters end up overcoming their dispositions.

This is also my favorite script of a play, in pretty much a tie with Midsummer Night's Dream. I'd forgotten just how witty it is when played by stage experts. So, the language is too exuberant to be tamed to nihilism as well. It's free play instead.

But different takes are always enjoyable, and the attempt to heighten the negative emotional tension between Celia and Rosalind actually worked to underline some elements that generally go unnoticed in the play when worked as a comedy (like the adjudication scene at the beginning of MSND; that verdict could be pretty serious for Hermia).

So, two thumbs up (as opposed to index and middle finger up, palm facing the gesturer. It's a British thing.).

Merry Wives of Windsor

Sorry no pictures, but we did see the Merry Wives of Windsor last night. This was my first night of garden Shakespeare this year, because of the nasty way the weather has of downpouring at right about the start of the shows (7:30 p.m.). One student, Amanda Rowe, met us in Kings College garden, which I had never been in before.

The college gardens are one of those hidden traditions that make Cambridge colleges different than those of the U.S. Normally, these gardens are closed to non-college members. When gardens are opened, they evidence the British genius with this art form--lush, manicured lawns, bordered by a profusion of colorful flowers and manicured woodland. As a further surprise, one of the Kings buildings that borders the garden was a rather daring modern block of rooms, with plenty of glass block and metal railings. One can't even see this building from any public thoroughfare. Actually, in a correction, one can see the back of this building from a public road, but the back is completely conventional.

Anyhow, the production was excellent. In many ways, it's Shakespeare as it should be seen--outside, with minimal props and an exuberant cast that is also doing other productions of other Shakespeare plays at the same time. Now Merry Wives is extremely topical--after the success of Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Elizabeth commanded another play with Falstaff in it. Here are the topical bits: it's set in Windsor, the site of one of Elizabeth's palaces, and it's placed in the present time (that is, Elizabethan present time). It's city comedy, in that it deals with social relationships and sexual mores of smart, "sophisticated," urban folks. Absolutely a puff piece, with Falstaff taking center stage, and at least two characters from the Henry IV sequence appearing (Mistress Quickly, Justice Shallow, and maybe the innkeeper, though I'm not sure about this last).

The playing was right where it should be: lots of burlesque, overacting, making a big point of jokes and puns, and so on. Again, the acting fitted the structure and content of the play.

A final word about Shakespeare as he "should" be seen--I just mean that in an "historically authentic" kind of way. We'll never be able to experience what an Elizabethan audience did in the way they did (we have too much subsequent media history, for one thing), but it's nice to see how it's done with many of the same strictures as the 1590's--few props, no real scenery, good costumes, a small acting company, gender bending. Of course, no spotlights in Shakespeare (we had those), and the gender-bending was all the other way, with women taking some of the men's roles, as opposed to the other way around.