Review: AS YOU LIKE IT, Shakespeare's Globe

Sean Holmes at the Globe has been characterised as something of a purist, his A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado attracting praise for their Elizabethan costumes and rowdy atmosphere. In the opening scenes of his As You Like It, much of the same traditionalism is on display, except here the result is not revelry, but artifice.

Holmes, along with co-director Charlie Josephine, puts his cast in an 18th-century aristocratic court, wigs and mantuas and all. The initial scenes of Orlando (played by Josephine) meeting Rosalind for the first time, amid his growing enmity with his brother Oliver, have the feeling of courtly ritual, careful choreography taking precedence over naturalism. Genuine emotion only occasionally seeps through – Oliver’s paranoid jealousy, or Rosalind’s banter with her cousin Celia – and everyone is constantly watched by a static cast of courtiers.

All this changes, though, when the characters enter the Forest of Arden, long interpreted as a site of personal transformation. Emily Carne’s set so far has been composed of several giant blank canvases; in an appealing coup de théâtre, a forest of handpainted trees are sketched directly onto them mid-show. The music, performed live on the balcony, also undergoes a shift, with stately Tudor drumming giving way to Katie Richardson’s folk rock takes on Shakespeare’s lyrics, which carry a certain pagan flavour.

All this sets the stage for a freer approach from the directors – everyone’s still being watched, but the watchers are involved in the action as well. Lola Shalam’s take on Rosalind, perhaps Shakespeare’s most finely crafted female character, highlights her open pursuit of sexual desire, and hints at the gender euphoria the character might feel when dressing as Ganymede. There’s a sense that this Rosalind knows exactly what sort of story she’s in, and is willing to manipulate its tropes for her own ends.

Meanwhile, Gracie Oddie-James is bitingly sarcastic as Celia, her facial expressions bordering on clownery. Even Touchstone the fool, portrayed as bumbling and middle-aged by Jonnie Broadbent, grows in self-assurance in the forest, confidently seducing the peasant girl Audrey away from another man.

With Celia especially, there’s also an undercurrent of class commentary; the forest gives Celia licence to dress in her idea of rural poverty (a pastel pink Bo Peep costume), and later on to briefly ditch her RP vowels. But strangely Orlando has also been given a thick Estuary accent not shared by his brother or any of the other cast members, the implications of which are unclear and underexplored. It also doesn’t help that Josephine plays the character throughout with a kind of wild-eyed bewilderment, making Rosalind seem like the only party with agency in their relationship.

But maybe these confused notions of identity are the point. The constricts of court life have been done away with, never to return, and in their place is the idea that we can choose our own self-presentation. Perhaps the Forest of Arden is not a real place at all, but one we invent for ourselves.

As You Like It plays at Shakespeare's Globe until 25 October

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