As You Like It by William Shakespeare at the Globe, London
Naomi Frederick as Rosalind and Jack Laskey as Orlando in Shakeseare's As You Like it at the Globe, London, Photo John Tramper
As You Like It
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Thea Sharrock
Naomi Frederick - Rosalind
Jack Laskey - Orlando
Tim McMullan - Jaques
Jamie Parker - Oliver
Laura Rogers - Celia
Dominic Rowan - Touchstone
It was a perfect June day across the Thames (although we waited until August before it arrived), and if Shakespeare's company were acting, flags would be flying above their theatre, hailing water taxis to row across to disreputable Southwark. Imagine a place where, if you tired of Lear or Macbeth, you could go watch dogs tear a bear to pieces. Twelve years ago long-faded images materialized as a faithful reproduction of the Globe Theatre, built in 1599, which was probably the year As You Like It was written—my play of the day—and perhaps Hamlet, too. They are the first names that come to mind as a Shakespearean tragedy and comedy, and neither is more enduring than the other.
Orlando and Rosalind, the stars of As You Like It—only a Hollywood term will do—are as perfect as Fred and Ginger: sleek, charming, graceful, high spirited but never high brow. Just as Lucas Cranach's wasp-waisted Eve and hunky Adam were the models of medieval fashion, Orlando and Rosalind are the Elizabethan version of the beautiful people. The current production directed by Thea Sharrock has turned into the hit of the season at Shakespeare's Globe (the theatre's brand name), but it shies away from the usual romantic glamour, substituting a scruffy, callow Orlando (any pretence that this beanstalk could beat the brutish Charles at wrestling is to laugh) and a boisterous, bossy Rosalind who was at her most convincing disguised as a man.
Within those restrictions, the performance was alert and funny. The local critics credited Naomi Frederick, the Rosalind, with carrying the show. She was a dominant force, often shouting, but she had a hard time playing the woman inside the man's doublet, when half the fun comes from seeing Rosalind melt with love even as she plays tricks on her beloved. Touchstone is the only fool in Shakespeare who's simply funny; he doesn't sting the king or chide mankind for its folly. Dominic Rowan, dressed in black cut velvet and gold brocade rather than motley, made an amusing faux-courtier. Even better was Tim McMullan's Jacques, which seemed to be modelled on Oscar Wilde as impersonated by Stephen Frye—a refreshing change from the sharp-nosed, withered stereotype (is it really possible that in one year, 1600, the same writer's brain could morph from Jacques's comic melancholy to Hamlet's profoundly philosophical version? A miracle). The thankless role of BFF Celia was gracefully carried by Laura Rogers, who was forced to stand around long enough to knit baby booties for the happy couple.
And the theatre itself? My impression of historical reproductions was formed by Henry James's sly short story, "The Birthplace." In it, a musty librarian takes a job guiding tours through Shakespeare's supposed birthplace in Stratford. He grows sceptical about the claims made for this shrine and begins to make up absurd fictions about the child William at play, at which point attendance doubles. What affected me in the story was how lime and timber, doused with reverence, can't recapture the spirit of an artist. On my visit to the Globe, I wasn't looking for a ghost's autograph, but I hoped for hte right mixture of ingredients—an open-air production, no sets, no electricity, groundlings milling around in the pit—might brew some alchemy.
It kind of did. The actors thrived on the immediacy of their audience, right at the tips of their shoes (in his famous set piece on the seven ages of man, Jacques gets a laugh when he gets to "At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms" and points to a baby in the crowd). It must be paradise for any actor to not be upstaged by scenery. Also, the willing suspension of disbelief shifts when everyone can see everyone else in broad daylight. (If you don't want to be looking past the actors to the audience on the other side, choose to stand in the pit, which also affords the best view of the rudimentary stage mechanics.) To be heard clearly by everyone, the players are almost constantly in motion, roaming the thrust stage, which in this case had two runway extensions that allowed them greater freedom of action—isn't that cheating a bit on the authenticity obsession? Acoustics are good, so nobody emoted in top voice without at least a few softer intervals.
The cliché about the Globe experience is that one's attention is drawn to Shakespeare's poetry. In the absence of scenery and props and lighting, that's true, but only in part. We moderns don't have Elizabethan ears. We've read the plays. Nothing is novel except the open-air ambience, and that's the very thing that wouldn't have been novel to Shakespeare's listeners. One will never know how an illiterate cobbler or a adventurous aristo wandering through the low dives of Southwark reacted to the greatest poetry in existence. I came away glad that I had visited; this isn't just a Shakespeare theme park on the river bank. But in truth I wasn't drawn into the poetry as fully as in modern stagings, where ambience and mood, not to mention a director's conception, give us something indispensable: an interpretation. The Globe gives us Shakespeare in the raw instead, shorn of interpretation in any sophisticated sense. Raw Shakespeare, like raw sushi, is a genuine experience. But I suspect there's more of Tokyo in a fancy Mayfair sushi den than of Elizabethan London by the Thames.
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