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
Adam Smith Theatre,
Kirkcaldy Four Stars
It’s a case of whoops, there goes the neighbourhood twice over in Rapture Theatre’s revival of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opens in 1959 in the same Chicago suburb where Lorraine Hansberry’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun, which appeared that year, is set. Here, Robin Kingsland’s Russ and his wife Bev, played by Jackie Morrison, are preparing to move out of their now almost empty des-res following a family tragedy.
Unknown to them, the bargain basement price tag has enabled a black family to move in, with Jack Lord’s uptight Karl a self-appointed spokesperson for the entire ‘hood. Russ and Bev’s black maid Francine (Adelaide Obeng) and her husband Albert (Vinta Morgan), meanwhile, bear witness to a barrage of everyday racism. Fast forward half a century, and a white family are trying to buy the same house, albeit with a heap of proposed changes which the black couple representing the block’s now much more diverse community aren’t…
It’s a case of whoops, there goes the neighbourhood twice over in Rapture Theatre’s revival of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opens in 1959 in the same Chicago suburb where Lorraine Hansberry’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun, which appeared that year, is set. Here, Robin Kingsland’s Russ and his wife Bev, played by Jackie Morrison, are preparing to move out of their now almost empty des-res following a family tragedy.
Unknown to them, the bargain basement price tag has enabled a black family to move in, with Jack Lord’s uptight Karl a self-appointed spokesperson for the entire ‘hood. Russ and Bev’s black maid Francine (Adelaide Obeng) and her husband Albert (Vinta Morgan), meanwhile, bear witness to a barrage of everyday racism. Fast forward half a century, and a white family are trying to buy the same house, albeit with a heap of proposed changes which the black couple representing the block’s now much more diverse community aren’t…
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