As You Like It
October 25 1996
By CLARE BAYLEY
There is nothing natural about nature in Steven Pimlott's production, designed by Ashley Martin-Davies. Trees descend from above like metal telegraph poles threatening to crush the characters, who wander around on the bare polished-steel floor of the Forest of Arden and are periodically dusted with fake snow. In such a world, it is hardly surprising that brother turns on brother in both the Duke and Orlando's households. And it makes sense that, once banished by her own uncle, Rosalind should trick nature by dressing as a man.
Pimlott's production is robustly populist. It features intrusive music by Jason Carr and even full-blown sung numbers, as if Pimlott has not quite got over the excitement of directing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But the actors are wonderful. Liam Cunningham makes a vigorous Orlando, so fired up by the injustice of his brother Oliver that he overpowers the champion wrestler Charles with relative ease. Yet when he discovers that Oliver plans to murder him, his masculine composure is shattered and his tears the more affecting.
With her gift for communicating unaffected charm, Niamh Cusack seems ideally suited as Rosalind innocent without being naive, feminine without resorting to tweeness. With each successful encounter in the guise of the "sweet youth" Ganymede, her audacity grows. In its quiet way, Cusack's performance is one of the great Rosalinds of our time. It is slightly puzzling why she does not reveal her identity to her father, who is living Robin Hood-like very close by in the forest. As played by Robert Demeger, marvellously noble in his drooping moustaches, he seems an eminently cheerful, self-reliant fellow. He welcomes the distraught and hungry Orlando and faithful Adam (John Quayle) with serene generosity.
The baddies are altogether less credible, which makes the story simpler though perhaps poorer. As Oliver, Sebastian Harcombe seems to come from totally different stock from Orlando. Wheezily scrawny and vicious, he struts in silver and gold pantaloons, and is reunited with his brother only when he is back in plain garb. Colum Convey as Duke Frederick is directed to be a spitting screeching pantomime villain who affectedly clutches his head as if the humours within are so unpleasant they actually hurt.
In the forest, in spite of the industrial metal and the snow which never melts, the conventions of comedy remain sacred. Joseph Fiennes and Victoria Hamilton make an excellent horse-and-carriage pairing as the non-lovers, Silvius and Phebe. Like a strapping little cart horse, she stamps and snorts away, while he, lanky, sensitive yet utterly inept, clatters behind.