As You Like It

_______________________________________________________

JOYCE MCMILLAN on AS YOU LIKE IT at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, for The Scotsman, 1.7.19.
_______________________________________________________

4 stars ****

GENDER FLUIDITY may be a relatively new term in 21st century western culture. The thing itself, though, has always been present; and no playwright is more powerfully aware of it than Shakespeare, who worked for a theatre in which all female parts were played by young men, sometimes – so we’re told – with disturbing brilliance.

Of all Shakespeare’s great female roles, none is more dazzling than the part of Rosalind, the brave, witty and beautiful heroine of As You Like It; and this year’s Bard In The Botanics season kicks off with an outdoor production by Gordon Barr that switches the genders of minor characters with a joyful sense of freedom, but is strongly built around Stephanie McGregor’s gorgeous and complex performance as Rosalind, the daughter of the exiled duke who, with her loving cousin Celia, leaves her uncle’s corrupt court dressed as a boy, to seek her father and his followers in the greenwood.

The production’s weakest link perhaps lies in its slightly cavalier way with the play’s strong lyrical sense of the beauty of the natural world. Only one of the songs – Under The Greenwood Tree – is given anything like its full weight, and too many actors are inclined to throw away Shakespeare’s beautiful and perfectly-weighted lines.

With the wonderful Nicole Cooper playing a lady Jaques, though, some of the play’s finest poetry shines through brilliantly. And almost everyone in the cast seems to get the joke of Shakespeare’s merriest comedy with terrific clarity; offering audiences in the Botanic greenwood a gentle, funny, and celebratory evening of Shakespeare reimagined but always honoured, just as he would have liked it.

Until 13 July.

ENDS ENDS

Advertisement