I always find it intriguing when smaller companies attempt to put on a Shakespeare production. It is demanding and at the same time not necessary rewarding for most. Then once in a while you ran into a production with some bold visions that made it work, and you found your time rewarding.
‘As You Like It’ might not be the most demanding work from Shakespeare, but it is a complicated web of mistaken identity, political intrigues and hopeless romantism tossed into one big bag of comedic action. Timing and energy are essential, and I think the current production at the Flight Path Theatre accomplished that most of the time.
The play has a big cast, so despite the pretty big cast for a small production, doubling up of roles are inevitable, and the main focus for these actors is to make sure the roles they doubled up are noticeably different, not just in how they look but also in mannerism. To that end, I think Sonya Kerr was outstanding. Playing both the Duchess Françoise and the Duchess Senior, she exhibited separation in posture, demeanour, speech and voice. You know that they are different characters and they are very different people in the story. Also, her clear articulation of the lines made it very easy for the audience to distinguish the characters, as they sound extremely different – there is no research work needed to be done to identify the arrogance and ruthlessness from one and the warm and optimistic aura of the other.
The leads playing Rosalind and Orlando, Jade Fuda and Pat Mandzig are no stranger to classic works, and you can tell. Their ease with the dialogue made watching them effortless most of the time. They managed to modernise the action with the Elizabethan language just enough without making either of it weird. However, there were moments when pacing of the dialogue increased because of the action on stage that words were clipped and became a bit unclear, which discounted otherwise a brilliant performance.
The word clipping issues are not limited to the leads though. There were quite a few occasions that other characters exhibited similar issues. Maybe it is the small space they were working with, maybe it was just a slip of attention, I do not know. However, certain character choices made for the characters in the play could also be an issue. It is hard to criticize on characters choices but there were occasions that I thought what I saw of certain characters departed quite significantly from what I imagined on the pages, and the issue became more significant when lines were delivered in an overzealous machine gun like manner because of individual character choices. Yes, it is a romantic comedy, but we still need to see ranges in character portrayal to make the dynamic and balances work. That’s just my take.
The use of Vivaldi with a mix of modern songs was a clever way to distinguish the two different cultures in the empirical city and the Forest of Arden. Alex is no stranger to the application of live music in his productions, and he has good musicians and singers to accomplish that. The musical moments were strategically placed to refresh the audience attention and to move the plot forward, kudos must be given to them. There is only one thing though. Due to the small stage, even when the sound volume of the instruments is minimised to perform a background function in some scenes, sometimes it still felt a bit too loud, especially for tender moments. But that’s just me picking bones out of an egg for an otherwise exceptional live musical ensemble.
In the art department, the stage is well and fully utilized for storytelling and there were some clever shifts of props for transitioning scenes. These changes were also done seamlessly by the cast as part of scene transitions, which was appreciated. Also, the use of costumes’ colour schemes to depict the relationships among characters was a nice touch too.
‘As You Like It’ is a romantic comedy by Shakespeare, so if you try to make sense of this crazy make-believe structure of a play, that is not the point of the play. It was just meant to be some silly fun to be had, and I think overall this production has achieved its goal. Another minor issue I noticed was when transitioning to some famous speeches and lines in the play, there seemed to be more conscious effort to show that. Maybe because it was me who was too aware, I don’t know. But overall speaking, I did enjoy the two- and a-bit hours I spent in the theatre, accompanied by a lot of laughs and some appropriately placed ‘what the?’ moments for me.
