Lola Shalam as Rosalind. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Review by Simon Jenner September 10
If there’s fools in the forest, you can hear them singing from miles away, in this late-summer feast of As You Like It. Co-directed by Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – who also plays Orlando – at Shakespeare’s Globe till October 25, this is a very full As You Like It too, running two hours 45.
It allows such often-cut elements as the seven degrees speech from Touchstone, where he riffs on forgetting. “You can look it up in the bookshop” he suggests before going on to finish it himself. Holmes has relished these fuller productions for over three years – gone are his cutting-off days. Nevertheless his pace never flags, and he and Josephine ensure the frankly picaresque drifty plot remains entertaining: an unfolding in song.
Photo credit: Feruza Afewerki.
Lola Shalam as Rosalind. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
That’s certainly partly down to the music, which sits with Arden, not the court’s Versailles costumes. It’s composed by Katie Richardson who leads a quintet, mainly percussion, it jangles the forest. The apotheosis is Richardson herself as Hymen. But she’s not the only one who sings. Lola Shalam’s Rosalind and above all Katherine Pearce’s delightful Jacques entertains – even leading off the audience. Indeed so much so we don’t quite believe their melancholy, though all those speeches are there. Pearce centres this show as above all a feast of singing and goodwill.
Designed by Paul Wills, his set is essentially whiteboards on which resident scenic artist Emily Carne – and subsequently scenic re-painter Elwyn Williams – live-paints the Forest of Arden. Cleverly alienated from this (initially sheer whiteboard) cartoon backdrop are the actors. They revolve in a late-17th early 18th Century flummox of costumes, their greyscale dazzling straight from the Globe’s team of costume-makers. Many of the cast double as courters so the first act is studded with sartorial magnificence; more than any court I’ve seen in this play. It’s when the court vanishes the whiteboards are scumbled over with forest: gradually, as if trees ripen in hours, ending with fruit.
And there’s game. A very realistic deer’s dragged on and off, once by a luckless Silvius after everyone’s ducked their share. It’s Holmes touches like this that define not only character, but their relation to others; even pecking order.
Charlie Josephine’s radiant Orlando is as thickly-accented as the stables he was brought up in (not sure this would be entirely the case, but it works). Their stark contrast in garb and traditionally garbled stumble marks them as startlingly distinct from Shalam’s tight-laced Rosalind and Celia (Gracie Oddie-James). Whose affection when expressed in their fantastical Versailles costumes not only physically precludes intimacy – those dresses take up half the stage – but visibly constrains natural feeling.
So that the unstructured clothing of Orlando speaks something more visceral than normal. Released into Arden-wear, though, and Shalam’s chemistry with Oddie-James rockets. They share a delight in the physical freedom of their clothes, even if Oddie-James is bo-peeped in light-blue shepherdess mode. Their exchanges and stage movement are more kinetic, unconstrained and quick: their slightly stiff deliveries earlier pay off.
Shalam’s relationship with Josephine is pricklier than normal. There’s sparky comic mis-timings to start with, though under Rosalind’s tuition this Orlando is given some apprenticeship knocks, quite literally. Shalam’s warm force and quick temper lead to bold moves, the wild permission of Arden that doesn’t mean simply sexual, which briefly emerges: Shalam shows natural command and a brief intermission. You wonder how this Rosalind will fare being a wife – and daughter.
Photo credit: Feruza Afewerki.
Grace Oddie-James as Celia. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
Josephine’s slipping out of wig, even change of hair-colour, convinces for once that no-one would recognise Orlando in Ganymede. And their final transformation is so breathtaking you wonder anyone would guess at that too. Josephine relishes the braggadocio mode.
The only thing they and Shalam lack is that ounce of magic. Oddie-James ironically manages with a glance to show Celia’s attraction to Oliver’s Thomas Josling. Josling’s good at the Sneerwell courtier brother, and the affected though sincere Amiens warning Orlando from court – as do all the courtiers. He’s particularly affecting though in his remorse.
By contrast Peter Bourke impresses as a rather genteel, strength-deluded Adam and a more natural (and irritated) Oliver Martext. In this production it’s good to see Adam survive.
Colm Gormley as both Dukes and Corin is worthy as Duke Frederick, but happier as swain Corin and even more as Duke Senior, smocked like Corin: having deliberately cast his court weeds. He rolls Senior’s ease and largesse, his apparent content with Arden.
Touchstone (Jonnie Broadbent) manages to get besmirched, washed off by Busa Wickramasuriya’s pining Silvius. Broadbent, another singer caries something of Touchstone’s court ambition with him in his complaints to Rosalind and Celia. His parries with Pearce are deeper than the two fools are normally allowed.
But it’s with Phoebe Naughton’s saucy Audrey that Broadbent flourishes. Their raunchy attraction is spiced by her still dallying with the attractive Jurell Carter as William: who’s improbably threatened by Broadbent. He’d earlier played an imposing, dangerous wrestler Charles: where it’s Orlando’s punches that land, more than unlikely wrestling prowess.
Jordan Rhys as a striking and rather commanding Jaques de Boys (the second son, a faintly absurd deus ex machina) and Inez Solomon-Gardner complete a cast that dazzles, and partly locks on to each other. Textual clarity and delivery is good. For charm, completeness and happy experience this is an ideal introduction to the play.
Wickramasuriya’s Silvius is affecting as Molly Madigan’s quite slinky Phoebe spurns him for Rosalind. The moment Josephine stage-whispers in her ear: “Sell while you can. You are not for all markets” elicits the best roar this line can have got. Madigan’s comical decision to make the best of her desires is another detail in a production brimming with relaxed invention. One where late summer harvesting gleams for a moment with the scythe of Jacques’ wintry resolve. Then vanishes. It just lacks the greatest frisson. How a brilliant young woman falls for a pec-rippling but untutored youth: and determines to make him fit for a life that leaves Arden far behind.
Assistant Director Marley-Rose Liburd, Movement Director Tamsin Hurtado Clarke, Assistant Movement Director Kate Crips, Fight and Intimacy Director Bethan Clark. Voice Coach Gary Horner and Text Consultant Simon Trinder.
Composer, Musical Director and Percussion Katie Richardson, Percussion Louise Duggan, Emma King, Beth Higham-Edwards, Woodwinds Israel (Ola) Akindipe.
Scenic Artist Emily Carne, Scenic Consultant Susanna Barton, Scenic Re-Painter Elwyn Williams.
Stage Manager Carol Pestridge, DSM Kit Fowler, ASM Ibraheem Hamirani, Stage Management Placement Jesper Raymond.
Globe Associate Movement Glynn MacDonald, Costume Supervisor Jackie Orton.
Head of Voice Tess Dignan, Wellbeing Leads Sonja Sorvola, Patience Zikhali.
Head of Stage Bryan Paterson, Head of Props Emma Hughes, Head of Wigs and Make-Up Gilly Church. Casting Becky Paris CDG, Casting Associate Alice Walters, Production Manager Wills, Deputy Company Manager Kristy Bloxham, Assistant Producer Sharni Lockwood, Producer Tamara Moore.
Grace Oddie-James as Celia.Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
Photo credit: Feruza Afewerki.
When white liberal teacher Tim Dunn (Josh Goulding) and Jessica Dunn (Antonia Bernath) lose their way home in a Black neighbourhood, Tim’s attempts to head off a gunman results in his being shot fatally. Bernath continually gives out a story, and Goulding re-enacts it several times, it seems more and more hallucinatory. The death though might be the only certain thing in the Story, as Black men are continually arrested.
An old white slaver newspaper has rebranded itself by agreeing that a Black offshoot Vanguard might report culturally. But under Pat (Lorraine Toussaint) it’s become what its title proclaims. Together with ambiguous reporter Neil (Ashley Thomas) Pat runs a right crusading ship. Into this Yvonne (Letitia Wright) is inserted, partly it seems by entitled scion Jeff (Will Scolding), someone whose heritage has given him a job way beyond his callow skills-set. It’s Jeff though whom it emerges Yvonne’s having an affair. She wants to work with him in the proper News. Pat squarely puts her right: the limits of Black ambition and where hers might be. But it’s Yvonne who scoops on a twist to the shooting story. And she soon uncovers the fact that a quadrilingual schoolgirl Latisha (Aliyah Odoffin) is deeply involved, with a girl gang.
Toussaint bestrides the production with dignity an affect, giving weight and a moral centre to everyone else whose loyalties and surrender to outside pressures or ambition compromise them all in different ways. Her finest scenes are with Thomas, her protégé, and her set-speech on what the past has cost her and what she’s done about it. It’s the sot powerful speech and belongs one feels in an even more powerful play. It’s where Thomas’ ambiguities are most exposed and he gives of his best – and in the dating scene.
Toussaint’s Pat is even more ambiguous with Wright’s chafing, ambitious Yvonne. Wright is radiant, literally illuminating with fierce intelligence Yvonne’s canny dissembling and ambiguous relationship with either Black or white people. Her attempts to win Latisha’s confidence allow Odoffin both to play with this ad show a trigger-fright that ends catastrophically at the end of the first act. Even here though, huge questions remain, her very existence doubted.
Around Wright Scolding constellates, coming into his own latterly, with slippage, entitlement and genuine hurt. It’s a fascinating crumble of a performance, but never dissolving into a mere stereotype, of someone who could be labelled as simply racist.
There’s fine support from the Neil-harassed Adrienne (Unique Spencer), whose relation to Yvonne clears some understanding (along with father Granville’s voice, a curious disembodiment voiced by Everal A Walsh). Newsroom Janice (Arianne Carless),and stern Nurse Hill (Donna Augustin) slowly admitting what’s happened to Yvonne; and the recurring, often malign presence of Detective Williamson (Jay Simpson). The ensemble’s completed by Tee Arnold, Reanna Bleu, Kati Buchholz, Angelina Chudi, Linseigh Green, Roland Royal III, Matt Whitchurch.
The even slicker 2 hours 20 – shaving off 10 minutes from press night – shows how slick and powerfully Dyer’s direction has moved The Story on. The way it lands though, is confusing. You see what Dyer manages, commenting on the wider capture of Black professionals through the wide lens of community disturbance. The original end though was more shocking, and ended with a snap. His ends in an almost random manner. This is still a powerful enthralling production. You never for a moment nod. Though you might be furrowed at the end.
Intimacy Director Ingrid Mackinnon, Fight Director Kev McCurdy, Casting Directors Alastair Coomer CDG, Martin Poile CDG, Dialect Coach Hazel Holder, Voice Coach Cathleen McCarron, Associate Director Emily Aboud, Associate Set Designer Kezi Ferguson, Associate Sound Designer Nick Mann.
Associate Costume Designer Johanna Coe, Associate Lighting Designer Tom Turner, Casting Associates Oliva Laydon and Tom Shields, Staff Director Jasmine Teo.
Producer Adowa-Alexsis Minth and Kimberley Thomas, Production Manager Ben Arkell, Stage Manager Ashley J Mochan, DSM Aislinn Jackson, ASMs Ian Connopp and Jacob Martin, DSM Cover Frances O’Donnell, ASM Cover Wen-Hsin Chiang.
Deputy Production Manager Andrew Pellett, Original Wellbeing Consultant Samantha Adams.
Project Draughting Gemma Grosvenor, Digital Art Daniel Radley-Bennett, Costume Supervisor Sarah Holmes, Assistant Costume Supervisor Aimee Darby and Aurora Street, Wig, Hair & Make-Up Supervisor Philip Carson-Sheard, Running Wardrobe Supervisor Jules Burns McKenzie, Props Supervisor Chris Lake.