A Journey in Disguise

Rather than simply reading, I went to see a play last night, and since I had to write a theater review for my class, I thought that I would just put that up, and save me writing a separate post about it.

As You Like It may be a tale of young love, but it is also a story of growth and experience, of introspection as much as of exuberance.

At least, that was the way it was played in Sam Mendes’s Bridge Project production, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music January 29. Mendes chose to present the play, which can seem one of the frothier of Shakespeare’s comedies, in a somber register. Set in modern times, some parts were downright menacing, notably the scenes at Duke Frederick’s court. These were played before a monolithic wall of dark wood that foreshortened the stage and suggested the interior of a prison or a stockade. The massive barrier took up so much of the playing space because behind it flourished the Forest of Arden, revealed by the end of the first act as mist-wreathed and mysterious place, fantastic, but with the magic of an unconscious dream rather than of a fairy tale.

Over the course of the play Arden turned from silent, icy winter into balmy spring, a gradual change which mirrored the production’s larger themes. Mendes wrote in his playbill notes that As You Like It and it companion, The Tempest, were “designed and conceived as part of a single gesture, a single journey,” and the idea of a journey, through time as much as through space, was emphasized throughout. Jacques’s famous, “All the world’s a stage,” speech describing the developmental arc of a man’s life, spoken with measured tones and subtle emphasis by Stephen Dillane, encapsulated the focus of the whole.

Unhurried dialogue was, with a few violent and comedic exceptions, common throughout, the actors using the stillness between their words as much as they used the words themselves. Occasionally, this restraint inhibited character development—Orlando, for example, was too thoughtful for a romantic and feckless youth. More often, though, the production’s quietude succeeded in evoking a sense of laden emotions and of nostalgia, as when the Duke and his courtiers slouched around their brazier in the forest, softly strumming guitars like a bunch of old hippies at a Woodstock reunion (an impression that was strengthened by Jacques’s riff on Bob Dylan during one of the songs).

Mendes’s production was a very completely realized vision of the play. Lighting, sets, acting, and music were all carefully contrived to give complementary impressions. There were only a few artistic misfires, such as the interpretation of the vicar Sir Oliver Mar-text as the sort of loopy itinerant you might hear in Union square, the use of Pheobe’s character to trot out some overdone, “it’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings” humor, or the faint whining drone of a dulcimer that arose whenever a character gave a particularly heart-felt speech. Generally, however, the performance succeeded in elucidating the heart of the story as one of love and transformation, both physical and emotional.

That success was aided by a cast of strong actors. Juliet Rylance as Rosalind carried well the most-exposed role in the play. Clear-voiced and emotive, she was most compelling in her scenes as Ganymede, where she struck a balance between demonstrating her ability to manipulate Orlando and her own vulnerability to his charms. Michael Thomas, who played both duke brothers, was also excellent. He disappeared so fully into his roles, first playing Frederick as an innately threatening figure, and then showing Senior as a noble but unassertive man, that he obviated the potential disjunction for the audience of seeing the one transform into the other.