As You Like It

On Thursday night we hopped the chartered bus to Stratford to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of As You Like It. What a treat!

We started off by heading to English Teacher Mecca, aka the Holy Trinity Church where the bard is burried. Then we had a quick meal at the "Dirty Duck".

I was previously unfamiliar with the story. But HSLP gave a brief run-down prior to disembarking from the bus, and once the show started I felt comfortable knowing what was going on. A few years back I had a ground breaking experience when I could finally read (and understand) Shakespeare (as an English teacher this was always a bit disconcerting, so I was at the very least relieved to finally feel some sense of mastery in this area). I've never been one to really sit down and enjoy reading a play (of any sort), but I love attending productions. College trips to the Blackfriar's playhouse were always highlights of courses, and seeing a staged production always increased my comprehension level (and in some cases it was the only chance I stood for comprehending in the first place).

I highly enjoyed the performance and were I in the heralded Page to Stage class, I'd probably have lots of analytical things to say regarding the use of color and light in the production. What I'll focus on, instead, is simply the players.

In the prior night's performance the actress playing Rosalind pulled a muscle. During that production parts were shuffled around, Celia became Rosalind (as she was the understudy), and they went on with the show. Thus, we saw Celia's first full production as Rosalind - she was stellar. I never would have known that she wasn't the originally cast actress, and there was a remarkable chemistry between this Rosalind and Orlando. This chemistry is rather comical as it seems that the actor playing Oliver is actually dating the Rosalind understudy. In the 10 minute recess during which the roles were shuffled around, Oliver reportedly approached Orlando and warned, "no tongue." hysterical. The extra fun part is that we get all of this back story because on Friday students in the P to S class met with Orlando who filled them in on all of the gossip. swoon.

During my first year teaching the honors English 9 class completed research projects on Elizabethan England and different cultural or historical aspects of the time. I was fortunate to have several papers which were quite interesting, particularly one on Shakespeare's fools / clowns. The clowns in As You Like It were stupendous. To those who want to get technical, I'm considering Jaques to be a clown because his singing (and likeness to my emo students) was too much to handle. Both Jaques and Touchstone were impeccably cast and portrayed, and laughs were abundant because of this.

Touchstone (as played by Richard Katz)

Jaques (as portrayed by Forbes Masson)

All in all, a wonderful evening (especially with the introduction of Pimm's into my drinking repertoire).