As You Like It

Synopsis: A video recording, using a single, fixed camera, of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1985 production of As You Like It. Directed by Adrian Noble with Fiona Shaw as Celia and Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind. Alan Rickman is Jaques.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 12 Nov 1985
Duration: 177 mins

General: `As You Like It is done mostly in modern dress on a stage bare save for a glass-less mirror, a green longcase clock and endless swathes of diaphanous white fabric, which, when not covering the landscape like snow, swells up into a tent or a palaquin. The exiled Duke and his forest companions wear white tie and tails. Touchstone sports an umbrella, and Audrey looks like a comic punk. But these Chagall-like visuals are used for lightning quick changes from forest to court." John Barber, Daily Telegraph (24 April 1985).
History: Press night 23 April 1985
Stills: Stills from, and design notes on, the production are available on the Arts and Humanities Performing Arts Data Service (AHDS) at http://ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/collections/designing-shakespeare.htm
Reviews: Shaw, Fiona & Stevenson, Juliet ‘Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It’ in Jackson, Russell & Smallwood, Robert (eds). Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp 55-71.

[Fiona Shaw and Juliet Stevenson, who played Celia and Rosalind respectively in Adrian Noble’s production, discusses their preparation for and conception of the roles, especially the importance of the friendship between the two characters and the dominant presence of fathers and absence of mothers.]

Name: Royal Shakespeare Company
Web: https://www.rsc.org.uk External site opens in new window
Address: Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Waterside
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
CV37 6BB

British Universities Film & Video Council