Review of "As You Like It"

We went to see a great play yesterday, by the Bell Shakespeare Company at the Sydney Operahouse Studio.

Brett: What should be in the illustration for As You Like It by the Bell Shakespeare Company at the Sydney Opera House in the Studio? My God, that’s a great thing for the first review.

Babsi: It is, it’s cool, it’s very cool. It’s very classy.

Brett: I’ll do the shape of the Sydney Opera House in the background and then the play will be in the middle.

Babsi: And maybe then the group of actors and their dancing.

Brett: Yeah because that was an important thing about the play wasn’t it? The group of actors and the movement. There was the wrestling and dancing, and there was the forest moving, it was cool. So were the actors more important than the play?

Babsi: Well the actors are part of the play. No play exists without the actors and actors can’t exist without a play, unless it’s improvised. I really liked it. I’ve seen lots of theatre plays with proper stage props and proper stuff and here it was more imagined. With the actors representing the forest and some of the actors pretending to be sheep, which I think is such fun.

Brett: Yeah and there was that bit where an actor pretended to be a mouse and another one pretended to be an owl, holding chairs for wings that swooped out of the sky bit him on the neck and took him away.

Babsi: It was just a mixture of everything that the theatre can do, really. That was what the special thing was. It wasn’t just theatre. Usually theatre and music are far apart.

Brett: And with the lighting as well they managed to make a big difference between the court and the forest.

Babsi: Yeah very different lighting, that was very well done.

Brett: The court looked like something out of 1984 with extravagant military uniforms and in the forest they were all dressed like extras from an impressionist painting.

Babsi: And the Australian accent didn’t hurt the Shakespearean feeling. If anything it helped it a lot. The acting itself was the strongest thing. It was a partnership. The people had melted into their parts. It wasn’t just, oh god I’m standing here I have to say a lot of stupid stuff, it wasn’t like that at all. I think Baz Lurman would have liked it a lot. And the Jester, though I didn’t immediately get that it was the Jester was very mixed, part old-fashioned, part modern.

Brett: Yeah they put the costumes into a different period didn’t they.

Babsi: The costumes were very sort of what? 30s.

Brett: Yeah there was some of that, but there was also some modern combat gear, I thought it was going to be set in Afghanistan for a moment.

Babsi: The costumes by Jennie Tate were stunning, they were very interesting. It was a fantastic experience it really was.

Brett: We could talk a little bit about what each actor did. For instance there was the main role, do you remember what the actress was called?

Babsi: Saskia Smith. Her performance was interesting. There was a very interesting transformation. Rosalind was, in the beginning a bit subdued, and you can’t quite work out immediately what the story is. But when she becomes a man she really transforms and the actress transforms. That was Shakespeare’s point as well, wanting to talk strongly about gender issues.

Brett: Was that in the play or was that just her performance? Did she just let rip a bit more? Because she didn’t have that much to say before at all did she?

Babsi: I think Shakespeare’s is quite a modern approach, somehow. They didn’t put Mercucio in Romeo and Juliet, the Baz Lurman film, in drag for no reason. The drag custome was important. And his was a very, very strong performance.

Brett: So you liked her better when she was playing a man?

Babsi: Yeah, I liked her better when she was playing a man because it was stronger and she could do a lot more with her body. Suddenly she was wearing pants and that made a big difference. She was a bit freer, moving around. Again a costume issue which is really, really interesting, and I guess it was directed that way as well, saying she really comes to life when she goes travelling and there was this whole great scene in the forest in the play. The forest plays such an important part in the play.

Brett: The forest is beautiful, they talk about snakes and lions, it’s supposed to be an English forest but it’s full of French people. It’s a very dreamlike place isn’t it? And in this forest there are lots of Australian shepherds with thick Australian accents and adlibbing Australian jargon and slang as well.

Babsi: The two brothers were both good. Orlando and his brother made the play happen from the beginning. They were both perfect for the parts, they were excellent. I’d rather see someone like them playing big movie roles. The actor playing Orlando would have been good in Pirates of the Caribbean in a Guy Pearce kind of way.

Brett: He had a real innocence and openness.

Babsi: In the play the first scenes are extremely important, I liked the Duchess. And she was also great in the role of the shepherdess.

Brett: Yeah it was a huge transformation but I thought she was the butt of too many jokes, it was a little misogynistic. And the jokes didn’t seem to be all Shakespearian, some of them seemed to be ad-libbed by the cast.

Babsi: Yeah of course. I think they made a lot of stuff up. The ventriloquist bit was strange.

Brett: Was that in Shakespeare’s stage directions, we have to look it up on Wikipeadia.

Babsi: The actress playing Celia was good, she worked quite well with Rosalind. Those characters worked well together.

Brett: That’s true, some of the things Rosalind does are a bit odd and Celia’s reactions with just hand movements would say What? That was cool and that really helped to sell it.

Babsi: And I liked that Melancholy guy.

Brett: What about that Jester guy because I suppose that’s a huge role.

Babsi: He was sometimes a bit too much but he could be very interesting. I mean his abilities, what he could do with his body was quite amazing. And that was true of all the actors.

Brett: Yeah, they brought a crash mat out to do the wrestling and the Jester did some tumbling on the crash mat before the wrestling started. There was a real energy about that, in one of the opening scenes.

Babsi: The double role of the actress playing Phoebe and the, I don’t know what she was supposed to be in the other scene….

Brett: She was just one of the guards in military uniform, looked like an extra from Deep Space 9 or something…

Babsi: The double role, when an actress plays two parts, that’s when it gets interesting in terms of ability.

Brett: And she played the shepherdess like a modern Australian young woman from.. like a modern shepherdess. It was like something from Little Britain, but the Australian version.

Babsi: And it was very funny when they became goats just eating Audrey's dress.

Brett: It was actually funny.

Babsi: They were as annoying as goats are.

Brett: It was a great experience.