The staging swaps traditional pastoral elements for Versailles-style wigs, pop-folk music, and energetic comic romp.
French Court Pomp Meets Pastoral Playfulness at Shakespeare’s Globe
For a play that pivots around the liberating disguises inside Arden’s bucolia, this production of the Bard’s pastoral comedy begins the dress-up long before its characters enter the forest for their games on gender and identity. Duke Frederick’s court resembles that of Louis XVI’s Versailles, with flamboyant gesticulations that seem to belong to Molière. It is Shakespeare, but it could be a French period romp. Costumes become plainer and more earthy in Arden.
Co-directed by Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine—with Josephine also appearing as an especially gormless Orlando—the production shifts styles and period specificity without ever losing focus on the need to ensnare an audience. The start suggests high-aristo hijinks, as if an elaborately wigged and costumed company are about to embark upon The Marriage of Figaro. Rosalind, played by Lola Shalam, and Celia, played by Gracie Oddie-James, dispose of their enormous wigs and bustles in the glade. Rosalind replaces hers with simple yokel garb as Ganymede, while Celia still flounces in an exaggerated Little Bo Peep costume as Aliena.
Costumes, Accents, and Character Dynamics in the Glade
Class delineations are made deftly through costume and accent but with no sense of overstatement. Orlando has an estuary accent which points to his lowly position among his brothers and lack of schooling, while Rosalind and Celia look and sound aristocratic. And yet you never feel Rosalind and Celia’s closeness. The two stand at opposite ends of the stage as Celia declares thou and I am one
after Rosalind’s banishment by Duke Frederick, played by Colm Gormley, but with a conspicuous sense of courtly performance that undercuts earnestness or intimacy.
Later on, you do not feel Orlando’s infatuated flutters for Rosalind as he nails his poetry to the trees. Josephine plays him flatly, with little variety, although their performance certainly amuses. Thankfully, Shalam carries their romance, managing to be both arch and excitable in her passion. Shalam displays a Rottweiler-like determination, barking commandments of love at all and sundry, at one point fainting at the possibility of snaring some of that love for herself.
Staging the Forest of Arden Through Spareness and Song
The forest has a stripped-down nature, with whiteboard backdrops on to which trees are drawn, first bare-branched but slowly coloured in to bloom. Paul Wills’ set design provides so much of Arden’s magic, along with the folksy musical accompaniment to Shakespeare’s many songs composed by Katie Richardson. Richardson, the play’s composer, lends a folk-inflected larkiness to the ebullient climax, which features an 11th-hour appearance as Hymen by the singer-songwriter herself.
The sparseness of the design is surely of a piece with a forest that is in fact several times referred to as a desert. The shepherd Silvius pays obeisance to the wounds that love’s sharp arrows make
, while the production’s wider ensemble includes Phoebe Naughton as an Audrey born to work a room, Peter Bourke as a touching old Adam, and Thomas Josling as an unusually likeable Oliver. Jonnie Broadbent’s bare-chested, lacy-ruffed Touchstone serves as a comic highlight, delivering a gasp-inducing backflip alongside his verbal sparring.
Subversive Edges Sacrificed for Hearty Comic Frolics
Although the comedy entertains, it takes away the play’s subversive edges, from the same-sex infatuation between Orlando and Ganymede to the alternative model for living that Duke Senior encapsulates in exile. The production occasionally seems unclear in its action, although what you lose in narrative clarity you gain in hearty comic frolics. Katherine Pearce’s commendably casual Jaques delivers Jaques’ All the world’s a stage
speech in a quietly moving fashion, anchoring the more boisterous antics.
That casual ad-lib tossed to one of the numerous lovers at the play’s conclusion captures the evening’s spirit. It is a production that has scant time for rest, preferring instead to release the audience into a late-summer landscape of mischief and mirth rather than dwelling on wistful or melancholy undercurrents.
Performances and Ticket Availability Through October
While Shalam may not be more than common tall
as indicated of Rosalind in the text, her commanding presence and chemistry drive the romantic core forward despite flat notes elsewhere in the staging. The achievement is ultimately one of originality, working a transformative kind of magic that turns a familiar drama into something weirdly fresh.
