AS YOU LIKE IT

The Shakespeare production for 2002 is As You Like It.   Says Director Derek Chapman “This is an ideal play for an outdoor theatre on a summer evening.  It is light, romantic and fun.”

As You Like It is about love – love of every kind.  There is love at first sight, when the heroine Rosalind meets Orlando, and love that redeems when her cousin Celia completes the conversion of Oliver from bad to good.  There is misguided love, when the young shepherdess, Phoebe, spurns her admirer, Silvius, only to fall in love with what she thinks is a handsome young courtier, but who is really Rosalind in disguise.  Then there is love as a farce, when Touchstone the jester falls for the goatherd, Audrey.

And the play ends in a “happy ever after” scene of a multiple wedding, as good triumphs over evil, and the four couples are united.

To match the sentiments of the play, Derek Chapman has used as a setting the deeply romantic environment of the middle of the Eighteenth Century, as seen in the works of artists such as Fragonard.  Characteristic of this school is the graceful gallantry of fashionable figures in pastoral settings, an aristocratic dream world.  They are charming and light-hearted paintings of love. 

Costumes (designed by Francesca Pinoni) and the set (designed by Bryan Ayres) reflect the artists’ emphasis on frivolity, intimacy and visions of beauty.  Visual delights are in store  to enhance the prose of Shakespeare.

An innovation this year is a move to the amphitheatre in Pissouri Village, necessitated by the restoration programme in progress at Curium.  There are differences between the two theatres.

Curium to-day is essentially a Roman stage, with the main acting area a semi-circle, whilst Pissouri is a reconstruction of a true, full circular Greek stage.  The gives an acting area that is “in the round”, with the cast in a more intimate relationship with the audience, in a manner somewhat similar to the rectangular “thrust” stage of the Globe theatre.  Bringing the action out into the audience gives everyone a good view over the stage.

Adding to the attractions of Pissouri are the modern facilities, which will be welcomed by  actors and audience alike.

As You Like It aptly links to-day’s Pissouri with the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s day.  This first Shakespeare play to be performed at Pissouri is the first play that Shakespeare wrote specifically for the newly erected Globe Theatre in 1599. A clue is given in one of the best-known lines from the play “All the world’s a stage”.  A direct reference to the motto of the Globe Theatre, and  an advertisement for the playhouse.