Botanic Gardens, Glasgow 3 stars It takes a wrestling match to make Rosalind’s heart go all aflutter over Orlando in what’s possibly Shakespeare’s most long-winded comedy. That it’s taking part in the grunt and grapple game that similarly gets Orlando’s endorphins going speaks volumes about the excitement going on in these would-be lovers young lives. Especially as the mat Orlando throws himself about in Gordon Barr’s promenade production for this year’s Bard in the Botanics season is ever so slightly soggy due to the light drizzle that briefly delayed this weekend’s opening performance. Barr goes for broke while it stays dry, moving from the opening scene in Duke Frederick’s court set beside one of the garden’s hothouses, to the Forest of Arden sheltered under a tree, to a flame-lit finale beside a sheltered pagoda. The trouble is, to get through this extended rom-com awash with rustic cross-dressing, one needs to do it with a gallop that the longeurs between locations hinder somewhat. There are still good things going on here, particularly from Nicole Cooper as a Rosalind who flits between mischievous tomboyishhness and a tongue-tied teenage girl with a serious crush. Kirk Bage makes for a stately, somewhat Wildean Jaques, and Beth Marshall doubles up nicely as Madame Le Beau and comely goatherd, Audrey. Best of all are all too brief cameos from Ashleigh Kasaboski as smitten shepherdess Phebe and Steven Grawrock as straw-hatted village idiot, William. As all four couples come home to roost following at least one romp in the bushes, As You Like It may take a while to get there, but, rarely for this year’s Bard in the Botanics, at least they made it home and dry. The Herald, July 16th 2012 ends
Intro – Snapshots – Deaf School
1
In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.
This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.
The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.
The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
1
In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.
This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.
The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.
The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
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