So instead I'm just going to list all the things I love about the play - ah, first up has to be Katy Stephens who is utterly sublime as Rosalind - she's so quick and clever all the time but she also manages to capture a real pathos and sadness in the role. I also love the relationships she builds with the other characters - particularly, obviously, Orlando and Celia. Really though as much as I see them playing their games together, it's the side characters I ended up really loving and caring about in this production - Pheobe and Silvius, and particularly Touchstone and Audrey. Honestly, they're both so utterly ridiculous and silly and excited about each other that I just want them to be together forever. And I love James Trahearne's show stealing turn as Sir Oliver Martext.
I love as well how music pervades this production. It's not only that it's used throughout the play, right from the very start in fact - as Jonjo O'Neill serenades the arriving audience busking in the foyer. I love that they started doing this as I think it's a great opportunity for the audience to warm to Orlando right away - he has quite an unsympathetic opening (though maybe it's just me who thinks he moans to much) and I think this circumvents that a lot. And this time he even played a song that wasn't by Bob Dylan (Redemption Song in fact). The busking also for me matches that feeling of coming out of the play and finding poetry plastered throughout the theatre - it's like the play is so exuberant and emotional and joyful that it's literally bursting out of it's own confines. It reminds me of Rosalind.... Anyway, back to the music thing - I also wanted to say that there are so many of the characters have elements of musicians about them - like they're these little sketches of musicians in all their ridiculous, poetical, self absorbed, posing glory - they remind me of so many people I know. And people I love. It made it even more joyful for me.
I also got a much stronger sense of sexual and gender confusion from the production this time around. Though perhaps partly that's because I'd just been reading about the connotations the name Ganymede would have had for some of Shakespeare's audience (I love Shakespeare - just saying). One thing that particularly stood out as different for me was that I'd never read/viewed Jaques as gay before - despite his interest in witty youths - for some reason it just hit me this time. There was something naked and painful and desperate in the way he looked at Orlando and Ganymede. Actually I really love the way Jaques is handled in the production (and not only for the use it makes of Forbes Masson's awesome vocal range) - there's something I've always found slightly unsatisfying in the portrayal of Jaques as this dispeller of wisdom, pointing out to us the foolishness of everyone elses acts. I love this so much more - Jacques as bitter and cynical and wrong, something to be overthrown and fought against. It deepens the infectious joy for me.
Which I think is nearly all I have to say (though I've almost certainly forgotten something) - the only thing I want to add is how much I love the set - another representation of Rosalind for me (seriously her character infuses this whole production for me). The way it falls apart, destructs itself and becomes something so much more alive and beautiful - it's just gorgeous. As are the costumes - being in the front I can only emphgasise how stunning the detail that goes into them is. There's ridiculously delicate embroidery on the shirts that the majority of the audience won't even be able to do, or the work that goes into shoes, or the beautiful ring that Le Beau is wearing and, my utter favourite, the beautiful patterns inside of Ganymede's jacket. Plus we have first hand knowledge of how lovely Celia's hair pins are, given that one was kicked into my friends lap.
So, yep, as you may have got from this review when I think of this production - my mind is overwhelmed by thoughts of music and beauty and joy. It was just what I needed.
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