As I Liked It

This Monday we all went to a performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Globe Theatre, which fulfilled another dream of mine.  The walk to the Globe was almost as enjoyable as the play.  In order to get to the theatre, we had to walk past a quintessential London icon: St. Paul's Cathedral.  I couldn't help singing "Feed the Birds" as we walked past.  :) We crossed the Thames using Millennium Bridge, better known as the bridge the Death Eaters "destroyed" in the latest Harry Potter movie.  The gorgeous sunset illuminating the river and gilding the cityscape made for an almost perfect moment.

Seeing a production of As You Like It at the Globe Theatre was almost like being transplanted back into Elizabethan England.  Even from the introduction of the play made without dramatic ceremony and the abrupt commencement of the action stripped away the layers of formality that have been added to the theatre, reminding the audience of the way the theatre would have been at the time of Shakespeare.  Unlike so many productions of Shakespeare today that experiment with the setting and costuming by placing it in exotic locations or time periods inconsistent with Shakespeare’s world, this particular production, directed by Thea Sharrock and acted by the Royal Shakespeare Company, stayed true to Elizabethan costuming and the setting in which Shakespeare originally wrote the play.  With minimal lighting, music (provided solely by live instrumentalists), set design, and props, the production effectively swept the audience back through centuries and allowed the ingeniously crafted lines of Shakespeare’s As You Like It to shine through.  The full effect of the theatre and production aided me in seeing the relationships between characters, the hilarity of the lines and situations, and the complexity of the conflict with more clarity.