All the world's a stage

I was back in Stratford last night, to see the first production of the RSC’s summer season. I didn’t really know much about As You Like It but I relish any opportunity to see Shakespeare…and the tickets were free, so it was a no-brainer. In short, it was a darkly funny exercise in Elizabethan cross-dressing with the usual criss-crossing of characters and stories that you’d expect from Shakespeare’s comedies. The play was staged in a very accessible way, although I did get a little lost in some of the more intricate dialogue. But it had some incredible lines that I didn’t even know were from this particular play (“All the world’s a stage”, “Too much of a good thing”) and the performances were just top-class, especially Katy Stephens as Rosalind and Richard Katz as Touchstone. So if anyone fancies seeing a play about a woman pretending to be a man who then pretends to be a woman (and in Shakespeare’s time women didn’t act, so it would have been a man playing a woman pretending to be a man pretending to…) Oh I give up! Pop down to Stratford if you can – this is a witty and clever play that’s very easy to watch.

V xx

: 06 May 2009 23:25 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem