Director
Thea Sharrock

Choreographer
Fin Walker

Designer
Dick Bird

Orlando
Jack Laskey

Rosalind
Naomi Frederick

Celia
Laura Rogers

Touchstone
Dominic Rowan

Jaques
Tim McMullan

Oliver
Jamie Parker

Duke Senior
Philip Bird

Audrey, a goatherder
Sophie Duval

Phebe, a shepherdess
Jade Williams

William, a countryman
Gregory Gudgeon

Corin,
a shepherd
Sean Kearns

Silvius,
a shepherd
Michael Benz

Amiens
Peter Gale

Hymen,
God of Love
Ewart James Walters

“Come woo me, I am in a holiday humour” says Rosalind to Orlando and this is the mood of the audience on a mellow sunlit evening for As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe.
      Thea Sharrock is making her directorial debut here and she brings wit, charm, pace and invention to the theatre. Orlando’s wrestling match with the bad Duke’s champion spills off the stage and in amongst the groundlings. The black pillars of mourning that crowd the stage are almost instantly turned into the trunks of the trees of Arden as their black silk covers disappear into the rafters. And Orlando’s love poems to Rosalind, “Tongues I’ll hang on every tree…”, cascade down from the roof of the auditorium falling amongst the audience like passionately scrawled leaves of confetti.
      Orlando is charmingly played by Jack Laskey as a wide-eyed, open-mouthed idealist so entranced by the force of his love and so enchanted by the Forest of Arden that it is easy to believe he does not recognise his Rosalind when he finds her disguised as a man. Rosalind and Ganymede are played by a spry Naomi Frederick, twinkling with wry humour and excitement and relishing the swaggering freedom her time as a man permits her. Her partnership with her cousin Celia, played by Laura Rogers, is surprisingly girlish and giggly. Despite the fact that the one’s father has just deposed the other’s, and they themselves have both been banished, they are out to have fun in the forest and they bring the fool Touchstone with them to prove it.
      The lovers are lovely, the shepherds are comely and the songs are sweetly sung but it is the contradictory partnership of Touchstone and Jaques that form the virtuoso core of this As You Like It: one delighting in melancholy, the other in the comic. Touchstone is played by the tall and physical Dominic Rowan, subtly clever in his facial ticks then barmily brilliant with his exaggerated gestures. He, like everyone else, is overcome by the love-magic of the forest and the audience thrills to him when he takes his own bawdy bride. Jaques, immune to love and in love with sadness, is simply superb. When Tim McMullan comes to his famous, “All the world’s a stage…” speech there is a momentary groan of laughing recognition from the audience but, so perfect is the rhythm of his speech, so well judged is his stress on the poetry, a hushed awe descends and the well-worn words spring to new life. A master is at work and the effect is intoxicating.
      Sometimes the Globe can be criticised for disempowering Shakespeare’s tragedies with its readiness to leap on any comic potential but this time there is no place for grudging words. This comedy is delivered with a loving touch by a cast that are clearly enjoying the fruits of their labours in a rumbustuous and rollicking production. The performance ends in ebullient style with an unexpected Bollywood dance-off in medieval dress. The audience leave loved-up and, truly, in holiday humour.
Charlie Taylor