Wyndham's Theatre Archives

As You Like It at Wyndhams Theatre – Review

On June 21, 2005October 25, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

As I like it

By Nicholas de Jongh | June 21, 2005 | The Evening Standard

I like to be nicely shocked at the theatre, and David Lan duly satisfies by giving As You Like It a sharp but appropriate Gallic make-over. Here in high heels, highish humour and a slinky, little black dress, comes Shakespeare’s wittiest heroine, Helen McCrory’s flirtatious Rosalind.

She is first seen sipping red wine with Sienna Miller’s bland, blonde Celia, in a Parisian café and, judging by the girls’ Hollywood hair, the post-war Forties. Lan has hit upon the brilliant notion of transporting Shakespeare’s sexually ambiguous comedy of love and misunderstanding to France and post-war Paris.

The notion fits like a sleek, fashionable glove. Shakespeare after all peppers the play with French place-names. The post-war Paris of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone Signoret and Edith Piaf revelled in an atmosphere of philosophical speculation, melancholia and bitter-sweet romantic songs.

As You Like It

Mad About The Girls

On June 15, 2005October 25, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Forget Juliet: Shakespeare’s real women are in ‘As You Like It’, as Sienna Miller and Helen McCrory will prove

Paul Taylor | June 15, 2005 | The Independent

Rosalind in As You Like It is the longest female part in Shakespeare, and once the character gets into the Forest of Arden and into male disguise, she acquires a freedom of emotional manoeuvre far greater than that of any of the other cross-dressed heroines in the canon. She has been called the “consciousness” of the comedy, a compliment that would never be paid to Viola in Twelfth Night, say, or Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

The androgynous focus of desire when in masculine mufti, she also offers the supreme instance in Shakespeare of the way that men should rely on the superior emotional intelligence of women. It’s a plum role but clearly also a daunting one. In the courtship game that Rosalind, in her alias of Ganymede, plays with Orlando, she has somehow to be up to her neck in the scenario she stage-manages and at a critically perceptive remove from it.

As You Like It Interviews Print Media

Shakespeare’s Sister Act

On June 7, 2005May 14, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

As You Like it with Sienna Miller and Helen McCrory

By Jasper Rees | June 7, 2005 | Daily Telegraph

Sienna Miller, Jude Law’s fiancée, is making her West End debut in ‘As You Like It’, a play she’s never seen. But it helps that she and co-star Helen McCrory have become close friends. They talk to Jasper Rees

‘The part of Celia is the most important role in As You Like It. Discuss.” This question will not crop up in any exam you may happen to be sitting, but it must cross the mind of directors.

Shakespearean comedy is full of twins sundered by accident or fate whose reunion the plot works towards, but As You Like It is the one comedy that portrays the daily event of sibling love. Rosalind and Celia may be only cousins, but “being ever from their cradles bred together”, they are “like Juno’s swans… coupled and inseparable”. Theirs is the best sister act in Shakespeare. So a production that offers a great Rosalind but an indifferent Celia gives with one hand but takes away with the other.

Continue reading Shakespeare’s Sister Act