I think some of the initial fizz may have gone out of these two productions by Sam Mendes during a long tour, which has encompassed New York, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Singapore and Hong Kong. At times I was bored, particularly during As You Like It, and that rarely happens with Shakespeare. The electricity seemed to have been switched off, which is sometimes a sign that actors are going through the motions and have difficulty bringing anything fresh to their performances. Last year's two Bridge Project plays, The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard, showed fewer signs of fatigue, and were redeemed by two charismatic performances by Rebecca Hall and one by Simon Russell Beale. I am a big admirer of Sam Mendes as a stage director, having seen many of his brilliant productions at the Donmar before he left London for New York. But I think on the evidence of these two productions that his finger is perhaps no longer on the pulse of British theatre in the way it used to be.
This year the company features Juliet Rylance (Rosalind and Miranda) and Stephen Dillane (Jaques and Prospero). Rylance is bouncy and Tiggerish in As You Like It, although her relationship with Celia (Michelle Beck) is underdeveloped. Last year in Thea Sharrock's far superior production at Shakespeare's Globe, Laura Rogers transformed As You Like It with her performance as Celia, but Ms Beck seems by comparison to bring very little to the party. Rosalind is a girl skating on thin ice, who launches herself into a series of gender-bending flirtatious games and finds she has bitten off more than she can chew. I don't feel that Juliet Rylance's hearty anyone-for-tennis approach quite conveys that, though her delivery of Shakespeare's verse is exemplary. As Miranda in the Tempest, she struggles (as she did playing Juliet in 2008) to be a convincing teenager.
Stephen Dillane's Prospero is so laid-back and underplayed that he seems almost absent. Much the same can be said about his listless portrayal of Jaques in As You Like It, although that is a secondary part. Although I found his delivery audible, unlike some reviewers, it's very soft-spoken. Unlike the majestic Prospero of Patrick Stewart, Dillane's wizard is a run-down, shabby polytechnic lecturer who spends much of the play sitting at the side of the stage shuffling papers.
The dynamic Ron Cephas Jones, familiar to London theatre audiences from Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, makes a striking Caliban, and Christian Camargo is impressive as Orlando and Ariel, but otherwise there are too many weak links in the casting. Mendes seems to forget much of the comedy of As You Like It in this rather mournful staging. I don't think his idea of pairing Shakespeare's two plays about exiled dukes quite adds up; the contrasts are much stronger than the similarities. In The Tempest, there are moments when over-elaborate design seems to throttle the stage performance rather than assist it. This includes a back-projected home movie sequence and an appearance by Ariel wearing the black wings of an angel. Less is frequently more where Shakespearean stage design is concerned, at least for me. But having watched Stephen Dillane on stage, there is a case for saying that less simply equals less. I think he's a first class actor, but he's chosen an interpretation of Prospero that simply doesn't work.
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