"Ralph Fiennes has proven himself to be a Shakespearean actor with gravitas over the decades. He brings that weight to his directorial stage debut of a Shakespeare play and a comedy at that. Not exactly known for his comic chops (there is the odd Wes Anderson film in his oeuvre), Fiennes brings a depth to this pastoral about tyrant brothers and exiles that dares to venture into sombreness. It gives the drama a fuller body without taking away from its mischief."
"Played in modern dress, the court of Duke Frederick (Patrick Robinson) is less a kingdom than a suited and booted corporation. Although his usurped brother, Duke Senior (also played by Robinson) bears vestiges of the boardroom in his demeanour, he and his band of self-exiled dukes seem to have built an alternative community in the forest of Arden, inclusive, kind and living alongside nature rather than seeking a Prospero-like dominion over it."
"The philosophical depths of the play are mined too: the idea that you have to get lost in order to find yourself, and wisdoms on ageing and mortality, so ruefully spoken by Jacques (Harriet Walter) in the seven ages of man speech. To liberty and not banishment, says Celia (Amber James) to her cousin Rosalind (Gloria Obianyo), as they leave the court for exile in Arden."
Ralph Fiennes stages As You Like It in modern dress, casting the court of Duke Frederick as a suited, corporate power structure while the exiled dukes create an alternative, nature-oriented community in the forest of Arden. The production favors deliberate pacing and measured stateliness, extracting delicate emotion from moments such as Duke Senior's kindness toward hungry Orlando and Orlando's tender bond with his ailing servant Adam. The staging mines philosophical ideas about getting lost to find oneself and offers rueful reflections on ageing and mortality in Jacques's seven ages of man. The forest becomes a site of liberty rather than banishment.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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