As You Like It (Series 1 Episode 3)

As You Like It

First Transmitted 17th December 1978

 

Helen Mirren goes for a stroll in the Forest of Arden and makes us join her

Cast: Helen Mirren (Rosalind), Brian Stirner (Orlando), Richard Pasco (Jacques), Angharad Rees (Celia), James Bolam (Touchstone), Tony Church (Duke Senior), Clive Francis (Oliver), Richard Easton (Duke Frederick), Victoria Plunkett (Phebe), Maynard Williams (Silvius), Marilyn Le Conte (Audrey), David Lloyd Meredith (Corin), Arthur Hewlett (Adam)

Director: Basil Coleman

 

In many ways this production of As You Like It is what led to the existence of the whole series of Shakespeare plays. Producer Cedric Messina, scouting Glamis Castle for another production for Play of the Month, believed it was the perfect location to film the play. On the basis of this proposal Messina then put forward the idea to “film the lot”. So it’s a shame that the production that kicked it all off is such an utter and complete disaster from start to finish.

I hardly know where to begin with the things that are wrong with this dull, inert, poorly acted tedious production. How could something filmed entirely on location look so much more stilted and old fashioned than anything studio-bound? It’s easy to blame dodgy 1970’s BBC equipment for the truly appalling sound quality (large chunks of the dialogue are near inaudible) and the static and unimaginative camera work, until you think that later that year the BBC filmed the landmark Tinker, Tailor, Solider Spy. Surely someone, somewhere dropped the ball on this? Was this the cheapest equipment and crew the BBC had on hand?

 

It’s this quest for realism that destroys this production. Putting the disastrous technical work aside, As You Like It is not a play that responds well to a realistic approach. The forest of Arden is a place more akin to magic realism. In the forest characters seem to wander freely around, don’t seem to actually live anywhere, some see their personalities change completely and events of the first Act are left so far behind that most of them are dealt with in throw-away speeches in the final scene. Basically As You Like It is set in an entirely “unreal” almost dream like world. So if there is one thing you don’t want to do, that’s shoehorn it into a realist setting.

 

But that’s what happens here. By trying to make Arden a real place, with real people, it makes the events and actions of the play almost completely absurd. By trying to impose a sense of geography and setting the action in a relentless parade of clearings (it doesn’t help that this forest seems to have more clearings and fields than trees) you can’t help but start to impose a real world logic on events that on stage you would just accept. Does the Duke really just sleep on the ground as this drama suggests? Why do people just seem to walk around the forest? How big is this forest? How can some people keep walking into each other but some never met? The more realist the approach, the more you focus on the plays (admittedly feeble) plot. Where is the drive here? What are the characters doing?

 

This is hammered home by the listless, lifeless delivery of the most of the actors in the production, and the complete lack of pace and drama that the director, Basil Coleman, has invested in any of the proceedings. This is such a straight reading (and I literally mean reading) of the play, that there is no interpretation at all. What is it about? What motivates the characters? What are their goals? By giving no directorial drive or interpretative energy, the play defaults into a serious of tedious conversations, the lack of drama accentuated by the aimless walking around or lying around on the floor that the actors have been directed to do while delivering the lines. They look so unbothered by what they are saying, and so little affected by any events of the play, that the viewer is left feeling “well if they don’t give a toss why the heck should I invest anything in this?”

 

Strange directorial choices abound. At one point Celia turns directly to the camera and announces “I like this place” as if she is promoting Thomson Holidays. A bizarre ABBA-esque music video quality is given to the final appearance of the lovers, as they dance down a hill dressed in white, intercut with all the other actors staring straight into a slowly elevating camera. Celia and Rosalind play a game of tennis with what look like cricket bats. Early on Le Beau is framed at the end of an alley of trees with his head totally obscured. The actors frequently stand in lines, probably because the camera couldn’t move (there are no prolonged tracking shots at all that I can recall). A flourish of having actors heads fill half the screen in close up while another character talks behind them is abandoned after the first half an hour.

 

And it’s long. Dear god, it’s long. When a production of As You Like It leaves in the sequences where pages sing to Touchstone (heresung by two eminently smackable child actors) you know you are in trouble. But then this scene comes so late in the play, it will only be the die-hard fans and suckers like me still watching. When this play is this dull you realise how many of the scenes until around Act Four basically revolve around characters telling each other things that are happening elsewhere or have already taken place. All comedy is lost in the languid delivery – it wasn’t until A4 S1 that I felt even slightly inclined to smile. It’s a slow, stately, appallingly unfunny meandering production of what can be a very meandering play.

 

I’d love to excuse the actors, but many of them are equally to blame. Helen Mirren is a great actress and does her best, but really her performance is nothing to write home about – you’d certainly not realise watching this that Rosalind is one of the greatest female roles in English literature. Fighting against the elements her delivery is often one note and rather shrill. There are small touches of comedy that might work on stage but are just lost in the outdoors. There isn’t really a sense of the character’s wit or brains until late in the production – for the first two acts she’s almost sullen. Anghared Rees is plain annoying as Celia. Brian Stirner is an uninspiring and dull Orlando – it’s never clear what anyone would see in him. James Bolam seems so keen on people taking him seriously as a Shakespearean actor that he neglects to bring any variance or interest in his delivery, going for a sing-song rendition that makes Touchstone irritating rather than engaging but disreputable.

 

On the positive side, Richard Pasco gives an intelligence and Bergmanesque quality to Jacques. Clive Francis as Oliver is the only actor who delivers his lines as if he is in some sort of drama and is easily the most engaging thing in the production. Dave Prowse (Darth Vader himself!) gives a sweet west-country cameo as Charles the wrestler.

 

But that’s about it as far as positives go. This is as a lame, old-fashioned, dramatically empty, imagination free version of the play. It embodies the very negative reputation this series has. It’s the sort of thing that, if shown to a teenage English class, would have them smacking the next balding man from Stratford they meet. It’s completeness alone that got me to the end. If you want an idea: for the previous two productions I filled four pages of my notebook with observations and comments about the play. With this I did just over two pages. And most of those were simply to state how dull it was. From the awful beginning to the cringe worthy ending, this is possibly the worst film of Shakespeare I have ever seen. I’ve seen it now. You don’t have to.

 

Conclusion

Quite simply the pits of the world. So awful it will make you never want to see the play again, never mind this production. The only good note is nothing, literally nothing, in this whole box set could ever be as bad of this.

 

NEXT TIME: Returning actors Richard Pasco and Charles Gray find themselves in Ancient Rome for Julius Caesar.