Of course, so many somethings can become too much, and at times this is a remarkably cluttered production, both visually and intellectually. While it is always cheering to see unabashed invention, there are moments when it all threatens to collapse under the weight of its own ideas. Richard Hudson’s design displays flashes of clarity — the Doisneau-like backdrop conjuring up the cafe society where Rosalind and Celia drink wine, the bicycles on which they make their escape from the court of Celia’s sadistic father, Duke Frederick (Nigel Richards, his leather gloves implying a suspect wartime past) — but there are odd superfluous details. It does not help the magic, for example, that the musicians taken into the forest by Rosalind’s exiled father, Duke Senior (Clive Rowe), seem to have a piano with them. This remains incongruously in a corner most of the time, making the Forest of Arden seem less sylvan wonderland, more school hall.
The French setting, largely conveyed by accordion music, also comes across as a little ’Allo ’Allo!. When Adam (David Killick) warns Orlando (Dominic West) that his elder brother is plotting to kill him, you half expect him to preface it with: “I shall say zis only once.” Not quite the Gitanes-smoking, coffee-drinking philosophical gravitas Lan probably hoped for.
This cluttered effect extends to the cast: there are so many minutely detailed, eccentric performances vying for attention, it walks a line between delightfully diverting and utterly distracting. Hughes, as ever, looks faintly disreputable, as if he is about to ask you for change — fittingly, as, despite his best attempts at invention, his Touchstone is about as funny as waking up underneath a park bench. Shearsmith’s Jaques is a spectacular, showboating churl, a duffel-coated Eeyore who is too peevish to be poetic. Phoebe (Denise Gough) and Silvius (Ben Turner) speak with French accents; Hymen, the god of marriage (again played by Richards), is a soft-shoe crooner; Duke Senior’s musicians double up as trees, sheep and goats, holding umbrellas to their heads like horns and bleating.
The production gains clarity from three strong central performances. West’s Orlando is quite likeable, well muscled, prone to violence and a bit dim — just the kind of aristocratic beefcake who is supposed to send girls reaching for their biological imperative. McCrory, meanwhile, is a fabulous Rosalind, the strength of her passion for Orlando never in any doubt. Giggling with Celia or ordering wine, she might start out as a kind of proto-Bridget Jones, but once she is disguised in male dress as Ganymede, she transcends all stereotypes in favour of emotional truth. Like summer shadows, you can see her passions shift across her beautifully expressive face, a grown-up woman unused to the surrender of poise this new love demands, yet still capable of keeping her con- siderable wits about her.
McCrory, however, has form, and might have been expected to deliver. More surprising is Miller’s fine performance as Celia. Thanks to her residency in celebrity magazines, she might be expected to have all the substance of one of her diaphanous skirts, as likely to carry off a Shakespearian role as Jordan. Instead, she portrays Celia as self-possessed and playful, full of down-to-earth merriment and perky cynicism. Miller can play tough enough to show that Celia is not just Rosalind’s spaniel, while her comic abilities — imitating a regurgitating pigeon, stuffing her mouth with bread — are as robust and unpretty as they are unexpected. Making her disguise as the shepherdess Aliena look like the kind of thing Miller might wear at Glastonbury is, however, a nice touch.
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This, though, is a production full of nice touches — just not a knockout. Still, while it might be tangled, the rush of ideas lends it an intangible sparkle that other, steadier versions might lack, a sparkle that seems true to the play’s mercurial spirit. Like one of Cupid’s arrows, this staging might not, in the long term, be completely satisfying, but with so many shots, it can’t help but score.
As You Like It, Wyndhams, WC2, Three stars