There’s a nifty new video out from Opus Arte of a production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the reconstructed Globe. It’s given the whole-hog authentic performance—in daylight, with actors in casual period costumes, musicians in the gallery above. It makes full use of the Globe’s performing area, including the yard where the standees are gathered, streaks along like an Elizabethan bullet train, and provides just about as good a rendition of Shakespeare’s idyll-in-Arden as you’re ever likely to find. The high-def video on Blu-Ray enhances the experience, given the possibility of sitting close enough to the screen to fill one’s entire field of vision, without being bothered by fuzzy video artifacts.
Jack Laskey and Naomi Frederick as Orlando and Rosalind
The casting is particularly strong, but more to the point, the director has solved what is to me one of the biggest challenges in the play: the central romantic couple can be a dreadful mismatch. In the text Orlando isn’t portrayed as being all that bright, while Rosalind is one of those über-intelligent women who stride so confidently through so many of Shakespeare’s comedies—Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Viola in Twelfth Night, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Often you wind up wondering just how long the "happy" ending would actually last, given the way those women abuse the very men they spent so much time and energy pursuing. That’s especially critical in the case of Rosalind and Orlando, given the degree to which she has unnecessarily trifled with him. Once Rosalind (as ‘Ganymede’) has established herself in Arden, with her own house and lands, and knows that she is living amongst good, if unsophisticated people, and knowing that her exiled father lives in the woods nearby, then why keep up the pretense of being male? Or at the very least why doesn’t she let on to Orlando, a man who is presumably the love of her life, that she’s in disguise?
But no. She persists in being Ganymede. It makes for much better theater, to be sure—and that’s all that mattered to Shakespeare, and that’s all that should have mattered to him. Yet, the sense of unfairness lingers. She rails against Orlando, abuses him, insults him, bosses him around (all in the guise of being Ganymede) and the poor sap keeps coming back for more. Presumably she is doing this to test his love for her, but that hasn’t been in question for so much as a split second. (Remember this is the play in which Orlando tacks up earnest, if awful, love poems to Rosalind all over the trees of Arden.) Finally she, in her proper attire as Rosalind, marries him. But she doesn’t deserve him. She has treated him as though he’s a brainless bimbo. He should be hurt, offended, insulted, and harboring grave doubts about whether he wants to spend the rest of his life with this acid-tongued woman who delights in deception.
This production’s solution has been to cast as Orlando an obviously intelligent actor who makes it clear to us that he has seen through Rosalind’s disguise as Ganymede fairly early on. So he’s going to let her play her little games, knowing full well that he has already won her. Thus my imagination runs differently as to their future married life, as Orlando will likely hold his own in an equal partnership with her. They’ll probably fight like cats and dogs, but in some weird way, they’ll probably be happy.
Shakespeare was a great lover of reduplication and in As You Like It he provides a near-perfect mirror of the Orlando/Rosalind relationship, in the far simpler and far more obvious Silvius/Phoebe affair. Silvius is a simple but good-hearted and utterly lovesick shepherd; Phoebe is a nasty little termagant who repulses him at ever opportunity and only winds up marrying him when Rosalind tricks her into doing so. Again the Globe director cast the roles perfectly; Phoebe is slightly unattractive (she’ll blossom into a real hag before long) and shrill, while for Silvius she found an adorable fluffy blond who can move from tears to goofily happy grins in a split second. You’re expected to feel sorry for Silvius, but I feel even sorrier for him by the final curtain, when he has willingly and knowingly chained himself to Phoebe. One thinks ten years farther along and shudders.
The other two marriages making up the final tableau are less complicated but probably short-lived. The faux-melancholy Jacques says as much of one such coupling, Touchstone and Audrey: his purpose is to get her into bed, hers to raise her social standing. They’ll achieve their mutual goals and go their individual ways. Oliver and Celia have just barely met, hardly know each other, and are yet jumping into marriage. That doesn’t sound promising, especially given that we know just how cruel Oliver can be—no matter his growing a good heart in the healing forest of Arden. And Celia isn’t exactly a shrinking violet.
Shakespeare’s plays can work—or not—in all manner of settings, but they were written for the fluidity of an empty stage, right in the midst of their audience, up close and personal and devoid of distancing stage effects. The multitude of scene changes aren’t a problem when there are no scenes to change, just people walking on stage or even playing from the yard or the galleries. Nothing distracts from the flow of the play; it’s all in the actor’s hands. They do it all with their voices, their bodies, their ability to project their thoughts and to keep the audience engaged by their magnetism, charm, and skill. As a successful public speaker I know all too well that the real secret isn’t so much what you say, but how you say it. That’s a platitude to be sure, but it’s also rock-solid truth. All the research in the world, all the expertise imaginable, won’t help you if you can’t engage your listeners and get them on your side. Being an actor on a stage, without lighting or stage effects to bolster you, means that your strength is entirely self-contained. You can depend on your fellow actors to support you, as you support them, and you can work with the audience. But it’s all straightforward people-to-people acting. Done right it’s better than the fanciest, most effects-laden extravaganza, because when you get right down to it, nothing much has changed since the late 16th century. (Nor had the late 16th century changed much from the late 1st century, etc.) We all respond to the same stimuli. We react to body language and gesture and words, all pretty much in the same way. Topical jokes may grow stale and language may shift around, but people remain people. So As You Like It casts off its "classic" status and shows itself for the delightful romp that it is, without any regietheater tampering, no setting it in 18th century Shogunate Japan or turning it into a vehicle for feminist commentary. Just Shakespeare’s characters, his scenes, his words, and above all, his incomparable spirit.
I suppose I could wrap this up with All the world’s a stage or books in brooks, sermons in stones, but I prefer to offer this heartfelt plea:
Well, praised be the Gods for thy foulness; sluttishness may come hereafter.