On Tuesday April 19th, 2016 at 7:00 PM, Carleton’s English and Theater departments will be hosting a screening of the National Theater Live production As You Like It, directed by Polly Findlay and starring Evening Standard Award-winner Rosalie Craig (London Road, Macbeth at MIF).
Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy about love and change came to the National Theatre for the first time in over 30 years, with an artful and modern spin. Written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio, 1623, As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle’s court after the banishment of her father the Duke. Accompanied by her cousin Celia , Rosalind finds herself in the Forest of Arden, where, released from convention, Rosalind experiences the liberating rush of transformation. Disguising herself as a boy, she embraces a different way of living and falls spectacularly in love.
Described by Time Out as “brilliantly natural, fresh, and bang up to date”, the play takes on a format similar to a sketch show: snappy, slipping from scene to scene in wild forestland. Polly Findlay brings a fresh air to a classic work by refashioning the Forest of Arden, the primary setting of the play. Her production contains no sunlit glades, no big beasts roasting over roaring flames, no rollicking Robin Hoodery; rather, the scenes are subdued and dark. Even then, the play is wrought with humor, and it s idiosyncratic style leads up to a joyous conclusion.
The play has also been described as a “proto-feminist powerhouse”, and Craig has been praised as proving “more than up to the role: warm, masculine without ever resorting to flat-capped, thigh-slapping pantomime, and ready with a wisecrack for every occasion.”