As You Like It - Australian Shakespeare Company

Overview

In a way, some of the flaws in Glenn Elston’s production of As You Like It for the Australian Shakespeare Company highlight that this really might be one of the Bard’s most over-hyped comedies. It's almost too cluttered with minor characters and intrigues to allow the typical strengths of the playwright’s traditional devices of irony, disguise and misrecognition to take full flight.

The tone and pacing in Elston’s staging — from scene to scene and sometimes, within longer speeches, even from line to line — sometimes oscillate wildly and uncomfortably. Elsewhere, we’re left longing for even this kind of seemingly arbitrary variation, with Charlie Sturgeon in particular turning in a very stolid, one-note vocal performance. Sturgeon, who’s known for his background in improvisational comedy, seems curiously miscast as the over-earnest lover.

However, the onstage dynamic between Louisa Fitzhardinge’s Rosalind and Claire Nicholls’ Celia give us an occasional glimpse of what could be possible within the production and similarly, there are moments where the overblown physical comedy boils over into flashes of excellent stagecraft, especially the wrestling scene between Charles and Orlando.

With the actors on mics it’s difficult to understand a directorial style that privileges gratuitous sexual innuendo at the expense of the text’s intricate wordplay. The cast is woefully unsupported by the songs and underscore, which are characterised throughout by pedestrian, forgettable arrangements.

To some extent, the Australian Shakespeare Company insulate their work from criticism, with a commitment to presenting "exciting, accessible and contemporary" versions of the Bard’s work, the idyllic setting of the Royal Botanic Gardens, and the child-friendly atmosphere making it difficult to evaluate As You Like It on the terms of a similarly priced mainstage show.

Over 25 years the company have certainly produced some really fine work – one of my earliest memories is being entranced by their Wind in the Willows as a child – but As You Like It doesn’t live up to that legacy. Over the hill in the Myer Music Bowl, the beat of Nelly’s bass drum beckons us back to the world beyond.

For more on this production, check out our interview with director Glenn Elston.

Image by Matt Deller.