The Aardvark Blog

As You Like It, the return of the sun
28/02/2016

A wonderful bright sunny morning here at Aardvark Towers. And what is more the fire lit first time. Hurray. Last night the Aardvarks went to Leominster to see a not so live screening of Thursday's National Theatre production of 'As You Like It'. This was generally very enjoyable, but the beginning was marred  by the bizarre decision to set the opening scenes in a City (as in City of London), counting house of some unfathomable variety. The office then served as the interior of the court and then a wrestling ring. All very peculiar and distracting.

Once the action was transferred to the Forest of  Arden all became much more satisfactory. Throughout the cast were wonderful. Particularly enjoyed Mark Benton as Touchstone, but all the principals were excellent including crucially the actors playing Rosalind and Orlando. However the use of the City to mean everything rotten and evil in much popular culture is lazy and often incoherent. I cannot possibly see what it added to the story, and it has the tendency to start one's mind running on all sorts of possible meanings which have no relation to the text. Just as in polite conversation recourse to the Nazis is always a sign that the possibility of further discourse is now at an end, so in the theatre a casual sideswipe at capitalism represents a similar cul de sac. Let us by all means have plays - and for that matter books - that tackle the evils of the capitalist system (of which there are many), but let us not inject such critiques into works in which such a reading is unhelpful.