The Globe’s previous artistic director Emma Rice left the job early because she failed, or refused, to stick to the theatre’s “original practices” rules (which include no artificial light or amplified sound). Though whether it can be said Rice’s replacement, the actor Michelle Terry, is sticking strictly to authentic Elizabethan methods by casting the deaf, signing actor Nadia Nadarajah in the role of Rosalind’s cousin Celia in Shakespeare’s comedy, a decidedly modern if laudably inclusive piece of casting, is less clear.
Not that anything so arbitrary as a rule should be allowed to stand in the way of this intriguing and delightful decision. Nadarajah brings a hugely expansive and refreshing expressiveness to the role. Granted, some of the language is lost. But the exchanges between her Celia and Bettrys Jones’s Orlando are wonderfully energised.
This is one of two plays with which Terry is stamping her mark on her new job. The other is Hamlet in which she, having once played Henry V, plays the title role. However, unlike Henry and Hamlet, As You Like It already has gender fluidity at its core. Rosalind has been exiled by her uncle who usurped her father from the throne. Her loyal cousin Celia sticks with her and the two young women leave the court dressed as men because traveling is safer that way. But in this show that gender joke is ramped up a notch because Rosalind is played by a (very tall) man, Jack Laskey, and Orlando, the lad with whom she has fallen in love and who has fallen for her, is played by a (very short) woman, the aforementioned Jones.
So despite Terry’s adherence to the Globe’s rules, there is a still a sense here of conventions being torn up. Not Elizabethan theatrical conventions, but the way in which actors are normally allocated characters; the idea of a performer being married to a role because the two are ideally suited.
It is as if the actors themselves have been allowed to make the major decisions for this production. And that is pretty much what has happened. Although Federay Holmes has been given the directing credit, Terry democratised the rehearsal process by allowing members of her ensemble an equal say in how things turn out. And they turn out well. There is a sense of freedom about this show, as if it were the result of playful enthusiasm rather than directorial vision.
The deadpan Pearce Quigley is the only member of the cast who seems to have walked into a role for which he was destined — the philosopher Jaques. The one quibble is that to say that Laskey and Jones have been cast against type is a massive understatement. It’s not that the actors’ genders are opposite to that of their characters’ (that’s normal), it’s that there is not even a single molecule of chemistry to attract them. Opposites don’t always attract. Suspending disbelief becomes as stamina sapping as it would if Jones and Laskey were different species.
Still, the spirit of playful misrule carries the day. And if it is “original practices” you’re after, there is little that is more authentically Elizabethan than that.
