As You Like It (SATF)

Here's how to do it. Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory's As You Like It is stylish, clear, beautifully paced, engaging throughout. The stage is a largely empty space with just a few pieces of furniture here and there and a striking backdrop whose abstract swirl hints at forests real and metaphorical. And from the opening moments it's clear that we're going to get an intelligent and unfussy account of this exploration of hatred, love, disguise and reconciliation, focussed on bringing out the characters and situations without any intruding directorial concept. If Orlando's defeat of Oliver at wrestling was slightly hard to credit (but then it always is), the resulting love / infatuation was instantly believable and charming, thanks to the acting talents of Jack Wharrier and the fabulous Dorothea Myer-Bennett. Clear and unfussy is all very well, but everything depends on the text feeling like a release of intellectual and emotional energy. Some relationshiops have to work impossible fast, and Celia (Daisy May) and Oliver (Matthew Thomas) managed the impossible. Vic Llewellyn made us believe we understood the Elizabethan wit and charmed us through the ghastly scene (one of the bits of Shakespeare I hate most) when he chases off the luckless William. Great attention to detail: Audrey lifting her skirts, the comic brushstrokes of Le Beau and Martext (Vincenzo Pellegrino); Paul Currier as Jacques finding humour in the melancholy humour (and reminiscent of Mycroft?). Anyway, love what Tobacco Factory are doing. They even produce a programme worth paying for, vanishingly rare these days.