Photo David Hou
When Rosalind dons a pair of jeans to make like a
man, the Stratford Festival's costume department even ensures that the
legs are fashionably provided with holes.
But that apparently isn't enough, particularly if you want to
emphasize the ludicrousness of Rosalind's bogus masculinity rather
than the fact that she's one of the most divine creations in the
Shakespeare canon.
So in the Stratford Festival's new modernized take on As You Like it,
you also have Rosalind fussing over the rolled-up sock she's stuffed
in the crotch of her jeans. Yes, it's that kind of show.
Petrina Bromley, a good actress who ought to know better, portrays
Rosalind — or, if you like, Ganymede, which is the name she adopts for
her disguise — with a jaunty disregard for Shakespeare's text. The
role, as J.C. Trewin once pointed out, is one of the great testing
grounds for an actress but you wouldn't know it from Bromley's
performance, which is so resolutely “down-home” that it remains
largely inattentive to Rosalind's complexities or to the melody and
meaning of the verse. Does this Rosalind qualify as a woman who “by
heavenly synod was devised?” Not this summer at Stratford. Not by a
long shot.
The result, of course, is a squandering of some of the play's great
scenes — for example, that marvellous moment when Orlando, believing
Rosalind to be a boy, is nonetheless persuaded by her to play a game
in which he attempts to woo her. Cyrus Lane's shaggy-haired Orlando
does convey some indication of the poor guy's muddled emotions when
he's in her androgynous presence, but how can he connect with a
Rosalind played the way Bromley does her? The scene remains a wash-out
— its fusion of irony, wit and passion flushed down the drain in
Jillian Keiley's production.
So, yes, people who genuinely care about this play are in for a
bizarre, infuriating evening. Yet on opening night there was also
clear evidence that a lot of playgoers were having an uproariously
fine time at a show that seemed more Newfoundland hootenanny than
Shakespeare.
This is not the first time that Jillian Keiley's devotion to The Rock
has led her to rework the classics into some kind of Newfie joke. But
when she transferred Moliere's Tartuffe to a Newfoundland outport in a
National Arts Centre production a few years ago, she benefited
immeasurably from Andy Jones's sly and knowing adaptation. But with
this summer's attempt to make As You Like It function in an Eighties
Newfoundland setting, Keiley is having to deal with the actual text of
Shakespeare — who seems here to be more of a tiresome inconvenience to
her than anything else. For the record, Keiley's co-conspirators in
this exercise include Bretta Gerecke (design), Leigh Ann Vardy
(lighting), Bob Hallett (music) and Don Ellis (Sound).
Even before the performance begins, there are fiddlers sawing away on
stage, dancers prancing about, and actors mingling with playgoers in
keeping with this director's penchant for breaking down the fourth
wall. We soon discover that Hymen, the play's god of marriage, has
been transformed into Hymen, goddess of marriage — and this won't be
the only sex change facing characters in this play. In Robin Hutton's
performance, Hymen also moonlights as a perennially merry emcee who
keeps breaking into the production's already fragile narrative line
in order to urge us all to have some real fun with another dose of
Hoedown revelry. “Let's have a song!” she keeps telling us, and it's
like submitting to the authority of a friendly but forceful nanny.
Jillian Keiley, in her program notes for As You Like it, makes her
intentions perfectly clear. She spends several paragraphs providing
the alleged context for her production — the identity crisis
Newfoundland suffered in the 1980s, But while it's all very well to
burble on in her notes about the wonders of Figgy Duff, Keiley's
vision secures no validation in performance. The audience waits in
vain for any convincing Newfie parallels to this story of a banished
duke who has taken to the Forest of Arden with a few loyal courtiers,
of what happens when he is joined by his daughter Rosalind, who has
fled the dukedom disguised as a boy with her cousin Celia in tow.
Furthermore this seems to be a production that doesn't much care about
the beguiling cluster of romances that take their delightfully
unpredictable course as the play unfolds.
The production's contemporary transplant doesn't take, providing no
new insights into one of the stage's sublime comedies, and
establishing no convincing relevance to the text. Indeed, the play
itself seems no more than a feeble pretext for Keiley's primary
intent. The latter is firmly laid down in the notes she addresses to
the audience in the printed program: “You're being part of a
kitchen-party culture, a dance-together culture — wherein the art is
not to be examined or observed but to be experienced by all of us,
together in a circle.”
Note that phrase — “wherein the art is not to be examined or observed
. . . .” Isn't it really saying — Shakespeare go hang?
Jillian Keiley is a director adept at getting what she wants. And she
does show a welcome assurance in meeting the demands of the Festival
Theatre's famous stage. So if you wish to be aristotelian about it,
you can argue that with As You Like It she has fulfilled the major
requirements of succeeding in what she has set out to do. But of
course, Aristotle added a rider: is it worth doing?
Keiley's predilection for throwing everything but the kitchen sink
into a show certainly has its defenders, so those loyalists may wish
to hail her treatment of As You Like It as some kind of inspired mess.
And to be sure, some irresistible moments do occasionally rise above
the sludge; there is, for example, enormous fun to be had from fight
director John Stead's lively staging of the wrestling match between
Orlando and Cory O'Brien's demonically grinning Charles. Just don't
expect the evening to make any real sense — narratively, stylistically
or psychologically.
Do, however, be prepared for loads and loads of jolly schtick — and
audience participation. Entering the Festival Theatre, we're presented
with a kit of play-along goodies. For some audience members, the
contents include a fake cedar branch, a scrap of paper containing a
poem in childish handwriting, a fan, and a Christmas-cracker hat in
green or blue tissue. Other playgoers may discover a device that
makes noises like a sheep: This is a production that considers baaing
preferable to booing, even though some of us might have a preference
to opt for the latter.
There are times when we'll be required to hold our bogus branches high
above our heads to show we know we're in the forest. As for the
Christmassy fun hats, audience members in the balcony are supposed to
wear the blue ones to show they're the sky. As for the downstairs
spectators equipped with the green caps . . . but really, who the
hell cares?
Perhaps, however, we are expected to imagine ourselves back in
kindergarten, ecstatic at the possibility of a miniature bunny or
whale landing in our hands while being passed through the audience —
and no, please don't ask what that's all about.
But what about the actual performances? Well, too many are clunky,
devoid of character awareness and inattentive to the demands of text.
Not to mince matters, Shakespeare's lines are indifferently spoken.
And notwithstanding this show's preoccupation with Newfoundland
nationalism, the accents are an undisciplined, bewildering mish-mash.
But there are always the sight gags to divert us. So is that really a
Donald Trump hairpiece that Scott Wentworth's villainous usurping duke
is supposed to be wearing? Well, at least this old Stratford hand
speaks his lines with some awareness of who he is playing and what he
is saying. Meanwhile, as the show rolls on, double entendres also
exert their dubious allure. So we're asked to treasure the moment when
one character arrives in a boat and asks an audience member to hold
his “dinghy.” Again, it's that kind of show.
Nevertheless, some performances don't disgrace themselves. Instead of
the banished duke of the script, we actually have a banished duchess
in the person of Brigit Wilson who exhibits a sturdy mother-hen
quality in showing concern for the remnants of her court. But that's
about as far as Wilson can go; she can't really be held accountable
for being saddled with a gender change that doesn't ring true.
The melancholy Jaques also ceases to be a male in this production —
but veteran actress Seana McKenna brings it off superbly, possibly
because Jaques has always seemed to occupy his or her own peculiar
orbit in the universe of this play. And yes, McKenna claims confident
control over her material — and possibly, one suspects, over her
director — in giving the Seven Ages of Man speech the weight and
significance it deserves.
But the lack of directorial alertness and narrative flow in this
production can still affect a moment like this one. The end of the
Seven Ages of Man speech coincides with the arrival of the aged Adam
in Orlando's care. The dramatic juxtaposition of these two moments —
Jaques reflecting on life's dying embers, and the sight of old Adam on
his last legs — offers a built-in opportunity for a responsive
director. But Keiley fails to take advantage of it.
Brian Tree's fragile, reflective Adam does reveal a sense of
character, if not of geography. Sanjay Talwar has some splendid
moments as Touchstone, often the least funny of Shakespeare's jesters,
but even he often seems trapped in a void when it comes to relating to
other characters. But that seems inevitable in a production like this
one.
Paradoxically the most enjoyable performance of the evening is the one
that definitely doesn't belong. It comes from Trish Lindstrom who
turns Celia, Rosalind's cousin and companion-in-exile, into a hapless
bubblehead. Lindstrom's gift for comedy enlivens the evening in a way
that no other portrayal does. Yet, for anyone who cares about the
play, her triumph in the role is frustrating because it's so patently
wrong. Absent is any real evidence of Celia's intelligence and wit or
any reminder that Shakespeare presents her as something of a mirror
image of Rosalind.
Yet within the context of this production, she and Petrina Bromley are
often a delight together — but rather like characters in a buddy
movie. There's a very funny wood-chopping sequence in which these two
actors reach their comic heights. It's a scene with antecedents going
all the way back to the glory days of Laurel and Hardy. The only
problem with it is that it really has nothing to do with As You Like
It or these characters as drawn by Shakespeare. It's no more than a
crafty bit of business that's been thrown into the pot because it's a
fun moment. Escapist whims like this don't do much for Shakespeare.
Rather they push him to a point of no return.
(As You Like it continues at the Stratford Festival to Oct. 22.
Further information at 1 800 567 1600 or stratfordfestival.ca)
