As You Like It (Southwark Playhouse)

As You Like It, the epilogue proclaims, is a buffet of a play: you can take the bits you like, leave the bits you don’t, and there should be something for everyone.

Derek Bond‘s new production at the Southwark Playhouse certainly leaves you satisfied and with a delicious taste in the mouth, given its often inspired use of physical comedy, musicality, romance, and confetti.

The ensemble comprises of ten actor-musicians, with careful doubling to flesh out the dramatis personae. For instance, Steven Crossley plays both the tyrannical Duke Frederick and the grandfatherly Duke Senior (who looks as if he may offer a Werther’s Original at any moment). Minal Patel plays the pugnacious wrestler, Charles, but also serves as Amiens, boasting a warm and rich singing voice that brings the production into its own. With a new score composed by Jude Obermüller, and musically-directed by Joanna Hickman (who also plays Phebe), the Renaissance songs are imaginatively realised for a 2014 performance that captures the charm and rusticity of the play without ever sounding twee.

In many ways, this is a typical Shakespearean rom-com, with a power struggle among the nobility, love at first sight, cross-dressing, and some running around in a wood. What elevates it from, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is the character of Rosalind (played here by Sally Scott and supported by Kaisa Hammarlund‘s delightful Celia). Scott plays her as an eminently likeable heroine, optimistic enough to fall in love at first sight but shrewd enough to take Orlando’s affections with a pinch of salt.

Orlando (Harry Livingstone)’s relationship with his brother Oliver (Dominic Gerrard) is as tense as the Montague-Capulet feud, but Livingstone’s lover’s eyes and secret smile when he thinks of Rosalind are heart-melting. Gerrard also gives a charismatic performance as Jacques, here depicted as a melancholy yet mercurial Scotsman.

It is interesting that some of the moments that elicit most joy from the audience are when Touchstone (Simon Lipkin) goes off-piste. Funny though it is to see Lipkin romancing a sheep puppet in place of Audrey, I can’t help but question the decision not to cast another woman in the ensemble, given the relative paucity of Shakespeare’s female characters compared with male (despite the wonderful opportunities in roles such as Rosalind and Celia). There is also a section where Lipkin gives us time off for good behaviour, breaking out of Shakespearean verse and improvising with the audience. He’s a natural comic, and everything he does on stage is lapped up by the crowd.

Rosalind tells us that love is merely a madness, but that it is a lunacy so ordinary that those who seek to cure it are at risk of the same insanity. It is this sense of contagion that characterises this production, and I’d be surprised if people left the theatre without grinning like a loon.

As You Like It runs at Southwark Playhouse until 18 October 2014