Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: As You Like It

  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Every now and again, I’ve been lucky to see a revival of an existing play that makes that play feel freshly written, as if designed for that company and that moment. The reworking of Death of a Salesman for an African American family; Theatre Wallay’s reworking of The Taming of the Shrew as a commentary…

  • As You Like It (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    As You Like It (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    ‘Don’t worry. Be happy’ sang Amiens (Kenzie Ross), as Orlando (Kayla Carter) and Adam (Summer England) were welcomed into the forest court of Duke Senior (Topher Embrey). The simple song, strummed out on a uke, acted as a salve after this production’s main moment of tension, during which a desperate Orlando had vaulted onto the…

  • As You Like It (Northern Broadsides) @ Leeds Playhouse

    As You Like It (Northern Broadsides) @ Leeds Playhouse

    ‘Time travels in diverse paces with diverse persons’, announced Rosalind (EM Williams), pausing pointedly on the word ‘diverse’. The emphasis on diversity in relation to time aligned with designer E. M. Parry’s interest in the programme note on queer time in the forest. Parry explains that their interest is in ‘disrupting the normative impositions of linear constructed…

  • As You Like It (film)

    As You Like It (film)

    Hannes Rall’s animated film of As You Like It, created in collaboration with the Shakespeare Institute, draws on a range of influences from South East Asia to offer a short retelling that would fit neatly alongside the classic S4C Animated Tales. In just 26 minutes, the film covers a surprising amount of ground from the play, with a…

  • As You Like It (CtrlAltRepeat) (via Zoom)

    As You Like It (CtrlAltRepeat) (via Zoom)

    ‘I like this place / And willingly could waste my time in it.’ Celia’s line in As You Like It rings interestingly in the middle of a pandemic, a momentary suggestion of peace and satisfaction in the idea of wasting time. Time is a luxury, even a superfluity, when so many in the theatre industry are facing…

  • As You Like It (RSC) @ Theatre Royal Nottingham

    As You Like It (RSC) @ Theatre Royal Nottingham

    The Bardathon made his RSC stage debut last night, in the small but pivotal role of ‘Tree Covered In Post-It Notes’. Brought on after the interval of As You Like It, this hapless audience member’s role was to stand in a coat festooned with hundreds of stick-on lines of poetry, and chip in with the occasional word…

  • As You Like It @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    As You Like It @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Everyone who complained about Michelle Terry ‘casting herself’ as Hamlet in the Globe ensemble’s other production should be forced to watch the joyful (and, imho, superior) As You Like It, and use the same logic to account for the Globe’s Artistic Director, on hands and knees, scraping along the floor and baaing as one of Corin and Silvius’s…

  • As You Like It (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

    As You Like It (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

    Playing in repertory with Hamlet, Maria Aberg’s new production of As You Like It shared more than just a company that reunited the leading players from her spectacular King John last year. The same foundational level of muddy soil that was exposed throughout Hamlet to finish that play in an upturned graveyard emerged again here, but as the end result of the gradual unpacking…

  • Shakespeare Poetry Hour @ The Underglobe

    Just a quick note on a thoroughly pleasant event last night. As part of the British Academy’s Literature Week, Elisabeth Dutton (who did wonders with Hoffman last year) directed a series of snippets designed to illustrate interactions between players and audiences, drawn from the early modern drama and later. The programme ran as follows: Fulgens and Lucrece (Induction, with household members…

  • As You Like It (The Bridge Project) @ The Old Vic

    The Bridge Project, the transatlantic theatre tour directed by Sam Mendes, is now in its second year, and this year’s pairing brought As You Like It and The Tempest to the Old Vic. Unlike last year’s Winter’s Tale, where accents were used to distinguish between the characters of Sicily and Bohemia, here the English and American cast members were fully integrated; a…