As You Like It
Theatre by the Bay
The National Post

The last, positively the last, of the Shakespeare summer wine, Toronto region, is also the headiest. Barrie's Theatre by the Bay lives up to its name in the most literal sense; it's housed in a square tent that does indeed stand on the edge of a bay. However, since the tent is fully closed-in, the water's proximity has to be taken on trust while you are actually watching the play. What you lose in atmosphere, you gain in concentration. Daryl Cloran's production of As You Like It, with the audience on four sides of the stage as if it were a boxing ring, is seriously funny and also seriously serious. It brings out complexities the current, perfectly pleasing production in High Park hardly seems to have noticed.

The period is announced in the publicity, as "the Ragtime era," though I would guess the director was influenced less by history than by the novel and maybe the musical, since he singles out two of their real-life characters, Harry Houdini and Henry Ford. (I should note that, though there are magic tricks in the production itself, there aren't any motorcars.) There's ragtime piano playing as we enter; Marek Norman, who also composed the music for the High Park version, has come up with a wholly different but equally delightful score here, including a closing theme that had me humming down the highway. Initially the music seems to be issuing from an on- stage Victrola that Orlando, the dispossessed hero, smashes to the ground the moment he enters to complain about his wrongs. We aren't used to this kind of violence in As You Like It, and it makes a bracing beginning to the play; it carries over into Orlando's desperate scrap with his tyrannical brother Oliver and, of course, into the wrestling match at court, which is one of the most exciting I have seen.

The verbal conflicts are as tightly wound here as the physical. Lorenzo Savoini's set is composed of three overlapping rostra; in the court scenes they're covered with tarpaulins, which are removed when we get to the Forest of Arden to reveal a surface cracked and mottled. The various levels come in handy for sight gags; "trip, Audrey," says Touchstone, and she does. More importantly they are used very fluently and intelligently to underline who, in any given dialogue, has the upper hand. What ultimately makes Cloran's production so rewarding is that he doesn't, barring a few forgivable gaffes, try to pump energy into the text; he draws energy out.

He does this despite having in Jacklyn Francis a Rosalind who, while not actually bad (the play could not survive a bad Rosalind), is disappointingly bland. Rosalind is the play's thermostat, and a very active one. Half romantic abandon, half devastating common sense, she keeps plunging the characters, including herself, from a hot tub into a cold shower and back again, like a one-woman sauna regime. Francis's performance hardly keeps up. She has some nice abashed moments early on, but abashment is not most of the time what Rosalind is about. Her two principal foils, in fact, come close to outshining her. Tova Smith makes a witty Celia, at her sharpest when, mouth agape, she falls instantly in love. Brett Christopher gives Orlando, normally a very cardboard lover, anger and ardour and an unusual sense of the ridiculous. In fact, he conveys the outrageousness of Rosalind's masquerade, as a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be herself, more acutely than she does.

Benjamin Clost's Touchstone does conjuring routines, mainly involving his walking stick. He looks like a Samuel Beckett clown revived by a spell at a spa, and, sprawling with the suitcases of the entire refugee party, he looks to have stepped right out of Waiting for Godot, a Lucky who gets lucky. With both vocal and physical bravura, he revivifies the entire role, including his opening gags about pancakes and mustard that Shaw once claimed would have any self-respecting audience yelling for its money back. Brian Marler's Jaques, a pocket nihilist with a Byronic streak, works similar wonders with his casual, sardonic treatment of the “Seven Ages of Man”. He nods appreciatively at the foresters' downbeat, bitter songs ("most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly") but is still mensch enough to proffer a drink to an exhausted old man.

Jane Spence's Phebe, strapping and blazing-eyed, gives the play an electric shock when, at the halfway mark, it most needs it. Her instant passion at the sight of Rosalind, staring at her and oblivious to everyone else, is very funny. It also -- a recurring strength of this production -- makes a strong dramatic fact of an element that too often gets taken for granted. Other examples are the friendship of Rosalind and Celia and the bloody napkin that scares Rosalind into a swoon. Another is the sadistic insecurity of Duke Frederick that permeates his entire palace. Brian Paul, genial until crossed, plays this to the hilt before switching, as is now customary, to the other Duke who is genial throughout. There is another excellent and less-expected double from Christopher Kelk as the play's two old men: Adam in town, Corin in the country, and rock solid as both. Matthew Deslippe's Oliver, strong and devious when he's a brute in a suit, seems at a loss when he goes native and reforms, but Alastair Forbes' lanky Silvius is very sweet, and even the minor servant Dennis, as inconspicuous a character as you could find in the Folio, takes on in Alex Dault's performance a brief, obsequious personality of his own.

In addition to Touchstone, the production sports another, more prestigious prestidigitator: Hymen, god of marriage, who puts in a personal, scripted appearance to preside over the quadruple marriage at the close, and an unscripted one, in tall hat and opera cloak, at the very beginning when, unfortunately, none of us has the faintest idea who he is. Even at the end, the casualness of his demeanour works against the effect the production wants him to make. The slack is picked up, though, by the song "wedding is great Juno's crown," which somehow works better as a company sing-along than it would as a solemn hymn. This in turn is undercut by Jaques' misanthropic departure, deplorable but oddly sympathetic. Balance is then restored by Rosalind's epilogue, which Francis does charmingly, winding up with a little magic trick of her own. The final effect is of illusion gently punctured but not destroyed, the final flavour of joy tempered by tartness. Where As You Like It is concerned, this is neither a revolution nor a revelation. But it is a pleasure.