As You LIke It Review
Oliver Williams, Leamington Spa Courier.
Brilliant. We liked Shakespeare's classic romantic comedy very much.
Black is the colour which engulfs the stage at the beginning of this impressive offering of Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy As You Like It.
And this ploy to accentuate the oppressive regime from which its lead protagonists escape succeeds in making their existence in their new wilderness home as spellbinding as the famous bard envisaged.
Once the shackles of this society and the play’s foundation-laying acts were broken then some wonderful acting amid plentiful dramatic highlights came to the fore.
Maya Barcot put in a sprightly and infectiously endearing performance as the playfully deceptive Rosalind, which set a pleasant pace to the work’s humorous love story.
And as a welcome contrast, Edmund Kingsley was assured and prominent as the candid observer Jaques.
A nice directorial touch was for Kingsley to appear as a modern day filmmaker - intrigued by, yet removed from, the peculiar events unfolding around him.
The former Warwick School pupil’s flawless delivery of his character’s immortal ‘all the world’s a stage’ passage was enough to confirm that a very special piece of theatre had come to the place he was once educated.
Christopher Harvey’s superb singing as Amiens, Arthur Kohn’s suitably slick wit as Touchstone and the confident smiles of Charlie Clemmow as the flirtatious Celia and Tom Foster as the love-struck hero Orlando were
among the many other features of the production.Shakespeare may have been right to say that the entire world is a stage.
But to describe the Bridge House Theatre Company as ‘merely players’ would be a massive injustice judging by this performance.
Oliver Williams 9/10