The balmy weather frames perfectly one of Shakespeare’s more outdoorsy plays, but having a star-to-be playing the lead role is the clincher.
Cush Jumbo is already known to fans of the TV programme Torchwood, but as Rosalind, the gender-bending manipulator of all who pass through the Forest of Arden, she is outstanding.
When first performed in the early 1600s critics said that As You Like It was a “mingle mangle”. And so it remains. The joints are clearly visible as reflection moves to romance, slapstick to serious, but this matters naught when it is attacked with such gusto and rowdiness, especially after the interval.
Greg Hersov, the director, has maintained much of the original dialogue, but elsewhere he has set loose a vivid and surreal imagination. Orlando, Rosalind’s love-drunk suitor, played earnestly by Ben Batt, wears training shoes while others are adorned in Metallica and P. J. Harvey T-shirts.
A vicar on a bike shows up towards the end and the comedy foil Touchstone (Ian Bartholomew) begins to look and act much like Timmy Mallett until he is silenced by Audrey (Victoria Elliott), who holds him tight to her breast to his squealing delight.
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The pace at the beginning is a little sluggish. Much of the early dialogue could have been cut to bring it more quickly to the singing, dancing and frolics where the heart of the play resides. Once the tempo quickens and the laughter increases, Jumbo’s magnetism is greater focused and the rest of the cast — each of them adequate and more — become strictly supporting players. She adds a Caribbean patois and streetwise swagger to her Rosalind-as-a-boy phase, coaching Orlando in seduction. In less talented hands this might appear crude and forced, but here it works, carried by her energy and sunlit smile.
Ashley Martin-Davis, the designer, and Chris Davey, the lighting designer, have created a stark, well-lit set which serves to hone the dialogue and action. Similarly James Dey, the composer, appears as a troubadour strumming simple chords on an electric guitar to great effect. While the first few acts require some patience, it is otherwise a first-rate rendition.
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