Review: AS YOU LIKE IT, Shakespeare in the Squares

An idyllic, timeless midsummer evening in a square off the King's Road enjoying that miraculous absence of traffic noise, a trick that so much of London seems to be able to pull off. Some had a glass of the fizzy stuff in hand, others had kids that wandered about a bit and all had a glow of hot, but not too hot, soporific calm about them. I swear there were even some of us not checking our phones...

Timeless is the mot juste for this format, the link stretching back 400+ years more immediate without the concrete trappings of a theatre, This was an As You Like It that conjured its bucolic world with costumes, music and, of course, words - Shakey stripped back but not shortchanged.

Designer, Emily Stuart, went for a late 60s look which was underlined by the cast belting out "Big Yellow Taxi" as we took our seats (though, in my mind, I was hearing "The Age of Aquarius" with all those flares and cheesecloth shirts). Occasionally, director Tatty Hennessy filters a little feminist sensibility into the staging and there's a gender swap or two in the casting, but it's really only there if you go looking for it - there's enough gender sensitivity in the text as it stands after all.

The ten strong cast play instruments, sing, fight, clown, dress up, act and (thankfully) project really well, no voice lost in the open space and no part of the audience ever too far from the focus of the action, as everyone dashes about in confusion spraying wit and wisdom amongst the tress and shrubs.

Katharine Moraz gives us a Rosalind sharp of thought and deed and (as ever) unconvincingly disguised as a man (in children's television dungarees) - which is how it should be. She plays off Comfort Fabian's eye-rolling Celia like the old friends they are and never lets us forget that she's in love with Jack Brett's boybandishly handsome Orlando, even as she schools him in the arts of wooing.

They get strong support from the rest of the cast in which Emmy Stonelake has a lot of fun with poor misguided Phoebe and Sydney K Smith indulges in plenty of scene-stealing as a Huggy Bearish Touchstone.

As You Like It has plenty of fine set-pieces - the "All the world's a stage" being the most celebrated - and there's any amount of comments on the nature of love, so you can take your pick if you're in its first flush or have grown rather out of love with the whole being in love thing.

But its four interconnecting plots are a tough ask to follow and sometimes this production rushes through the lines so quickly and barely pauses before the next couple run on to the lawn to do battle, that it's quite hard to keep up with who's who and what's what. Perhaps a slightly fuller synopsis in the otherwise excellent programme would help.

That said, this production is as much about the event as the play and, with the weather favouring it so handsomely, what better way is there to spend the couple of hours before the highest suns of the year drop out of sight?

Shakespeare in the Squares's As You Like It continues at various venues until 12 July.

Photo James Millar Photography

To post a comment, you must register and login.