Leah Harvey, left, and Rose Ayling-Ellis in As You Like It
(Picture: Manuel Harlan)The West End’s spanking new theatre @sohoplace comes into its own with this rich and beautiful staging of Shakespeare’s comedy by Josie Rourke, full of music and charm. Leah Harvey’s Rosalind, Alfred Enoch’s Orlando and Rose Ayling-Ellis’s Celia are played younger than usual, their teenage hijinks and sudden passions faintly absurd, though no less moving for that. Enoch’s moustache, mocked by the girls as a “little beard”, even looks like an attempt to appear older.
This is an inclusive show, with some parts taken by trans, gender-fluid or non-binary performers. EastEnders star and Strictly winner Ayling-Ellis is deaf, and the fact that she and Harvey’s Rosalind communicate chiefly through sign language (Harvey also speaks, and all the dialogue is shown on screens around the auditorium) adds another layer to their intimacy. I confess I found the surtitles distracting: but, you know, I got over it.
Ayling-Ellis brings all the glee and exuberance she showed in Strictly to the part, and faces the added challenge of an in-the-round theatre, signing in 360 degrees. The soulful Harvey, meanwhile, signs eloquently while also communicating that it’s a second language.
There’s a clarity to the relationships and the famous soliloquies here that I haven’t experienced in years. American star Martha Plimpton plays Jaques as a woman, whose melancholy seems deeply-rooted rather than – as is usual – an affectation. She delivers “all the world’s a stage” with crisp aplomb.
The atmosphere of Rourke’s production is autumnal. As You Like It celebrates a retreat into sunlit rural simplicity, but there are as many references to frost as to spring in the text.
When the ancient servant Adam, played here by the brilliant June Watson, dies, falling leaves turn to snow: a reminder that youthful vitality doesn’t last forever. Yet this remains a comedy, and a playful one. Composer-pianist Michael Bruce keeps up a live piano score throughout, like they used to have in cinemas for silent movies. In the early scenes at court his grand piano stands shinily proud. In the forest, it’s half-sunk and covered in moss. Tormented lovers regularly fling themselves upon it.
Rourke seems instinctively to have understood the demands and opportunities of a venue where 600 audience members in three vertically-stacked tiers completely surround the stage. This place has the bare-bones simplicity of Shakespeare’s Globe but an even greater intimacy. It’s just us and the actors in close proximity with little scope for set. So designer Robert Jones, with Poppy Hall, has great fun with the costumes, especially Plimpton’s wigs and britches.
This As You Like It isn’t perfect: some moments lag and Tom Mison’s languid fool Touchstone didn’t work for me. But Rourke’s joyful, bold production gives us an idea of what this new theatre can show us.
