Theatre Review: As You Like It

 The Play: As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Where: Melbourne Theatre Company

Stars: 3.5

Season ended 18 December.

Jay and I caught the penultimate performance of the MTC's lastest rendition of As You Like It on Saturday at the matinee session. 

To be honest, I wasn't quite convinced, although it was lovely to put in my Shakespearean babelfish and relax into the language which I love so well. We were supposed to go last Friday night, but a technical issue saw the performance cancelled, and we were luck to be able to exchange our tickets for this performance. 

As You Like It isn't my favourite Shakespeare either. Never has been, never will be. It's one of the lightweight pastoral comedies, where there are banishments and running around the forest and cross dressing and it's all very silly. Yes, it has some fabulous speeches within the silliness, but it's a fluffy play. Not being in a silly frame of mind, I had to look for the good in other places in this rather banal play. 

And yes, the costumes and staging were sumptuous, although it was hard to tell the male characters apart as they all looked the same. The set was lovely too, although I'm not too sure why they had floating goat heads up the back of the stage - they were off-putting (the sheep portrayed at the Pop Up Globe were much more engaging). 

This was Christy Whelan-Browne's production as she outshone most of the cast as a very strong Rosalind. James Mackay's Orlando grew in strength as the performance went on, and both Natalie Abbott as Phebe and Tim Walter as the lugubrious Jaques brought a lot of light to the production.

Added to this, Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall put their stamp on the production composing the music, which was great - though the sight of Richard Piper playing the guitar left-handed felt a bit jarring. The music was really well done, I'll give it that. 

But I found the first half quite stunted, though not dry enough to have me walk out, as the woman who was sitting next to me did, but the second half made up for it. 

Above all, it was lovely to be back in the theatre watching a Shakespearean play. Though not up there with some of the greats done by the MTC - and I'm thinking about the superlative Richard III from fifteen years ago, this was a more than adequate, end of year performance, which on reflection, I liked more than I disliked. 

Today's song: