Theater: As You Like it at Folger Theater Washington DC
I attended a nice performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It (ca. 1559) last week while on a business trip to Washington DC. The streets were eerily quiet, as the play coincided with the beginning of the Super Bowl, reminding me of a past trip to Paris in which it appeared the population had transiently vanished during a match of the French national soccer team. It seems that only sports get that kind of unifying hold on the general population these days.
The Folger Shakespeare Library is one of the world's great repositories of Shakespeare documents, and hosts a well established theater company to boot. Performances are held in a smallish theater constructed in the style of the Old Globe, i.e. big central space (here with seats, not standing patrons), and surrounding wrap-around balconies. At the Folger the effect is rather too dark, as all the surfaces are from a dark polished wood, making the interior a bit rich for what Shakespeare would have expected for his crowd-pleasing plays. It is cool, however, to browse the museum during intermissions, here a wonderful collection of 14th century manuscripts from Oxford, with beautiful illustrated bibles and anatomy texts (yes, some were daring to dissect in Catholic England).
As You Like It is not one of Shakespeare's best plays. Most of the slight plot is laid out in the first scene or two, and quickly the action moves to the Arden Wood, where lovers are mistaken (or go incognito), lots of miscommunication ensues, and Shakespeare basically does a 2 hour fantasia on how lovers deceive themselves and each other. For me it comes across as a mild romantic comedy--pleasant without being compelling, rather like most modern film romantic comedies not by Woody Allen or Judd Apatow. Here, Shakespeare may have been repeating some of his earlier success with A Midsummer Night's Dream, where another forest provides the cover for mistaken identity and lovers finding their grounding, but this one lacks the device of fairies and the supernatural that make that play such a delight.
The production was well staged and paced, with a strong performance by Lindsay Alexandra Carter (Rosalind), who provides a warm center to the play. Most of the cast had a good sense of how to deliver Shakespeare's verse in that interesting mix of speech and song. It is unfortunate when one actor (here the Oliver of Michael Glenn) does not do this so well. His "unmusical" delivery was distracting, and made me cringe when awaiting his lines, rather like experiencing a single bad singer in an opera. As You Like It is particularly rich in songs, and this production used an eclectic mix of pop, rap, and bluegrass tunes, to set Shakespeare's lyrics. These were OK in a pleasantly amateurish way, but the bar has now been raised in what we expect actors to be able to do when they play instruments or sing (e.g. John Doyle's versions of Sweeney Todd and Company, with the actors playing instrumental parts when not singing).
It is always interesting to overhear nearby conversations from worlds not your own. At the play, two millennial young women were trading insider theater gossip and simultaneously updating each other on their theater administration career progress. It was rather sad to hear one say that she was really excited about the fabulous progress of her theater (very Trump!), only to reveal that their attendance at the last performance was up to (!) 12 people. She did not seem discouraged in the least.
The Folger Shakespeare Library is one of the world's great repositories of Shakespeare documents, and hosts a well established theater company to boot. Performances are held in a smallish theater constructed in the style of the Old Globe, i.e. big central space (here with seats, not standing patrons), and surrounding wrap-around balconies. At the Folger the effect is rather too dark, as all the surfaces are from a dark polished wood, making the interior a bit rich for what Shakespeare would have expected for his crowd-pleasing plays. It is cool, however, to browse the museum during intermissions, here a wonderful collection of 14th century manuscripts from Oxford, with beautiful illustrated bibles and anatomy texts (yes, some were daring to dissect in Catholic England).
As You Like It is not one of Shakespeare's best plays. Most of the slight plot is laid out in the first scene or two, and quickly the action moves to the Arden Wood, where lovers are mistaken (or go incognito), lots of miscommunication ensues, and Shakespeare basically does a 2 hour fantasia on how lovers deceive themselves and each other. For me it comes across as a mild romantic comedy--pleasant without being compelling, rather like most modern film romantic comedies not by Woody Allen or Judd Apatow. Here, Shakespeare may have been repeating some of his earlier success with A Midsummer Night's Dream, where another forest provides the cover for mistaken identity and lovers finding their grounding, but this one lacks the device of fairies and the supernatural that make that play such a delight.
The production was well staged and paced, with a strong performance by Lindsay Alexandra Carter (Rosalind), who provides a warm center to the play. Most of the cast had a good sense of how to deliver Shakespeare's verse in that interesting mix of speech and song. It is unfortunate when one actor (here the Oliver of Michael Glenn) does not do this so well. His "unmusical" delivery was distracting, and made me cringe when awaiting his lines, rather like experiencing a single bad singer in an opera. As You Like It is particularly rich in songs, and this production used an eclectic mix of pop, rap, and bluegrass tunes, to set Shakespeare's lyrics. These were OK in a pleasantly amateurish way, but the bar has now been raised in what we expect actors to be able to do when they play instruments or sing (e.g. John Doyle's versions of Sweeney Todd and Company, with the actors playing instrumental parts when not singing).
It is always interesting to overhear nearby conversations from worlds not your own. At the play, two millennial young women were trading insider theater gossip and simultaneously updating each other on their theater administration career progress. It was rather sad to hear one say that she was really excited about the fabulous progress of her theater (very Trump!), only to reveal that their attendance at the last performance was up to (!) 12 people. She did not seem discouraged in the least.
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