"Take off your corset and spread out..."
I am returned from Sheffield, and the university has just been bumped up from bottom of the pile to third in line. If Durham don't respond positively, it will most likely be my second choice. The English Department was just brilliant. But that's not why I'm posting today...
You may remember my small explosion of squee a while ago when I learned I would be going to see Sam Troughton live in As You Like It at the Sheffield Crucible.
You may, then, be interested to know the exact extent of the awesome I witnessed on that stage. Here it is, my Evening of Squee, Part One!
Ok, first off I did try and draft this post several times, but it ended up straying into dangerous theatre-review and plot synopsis territory, and since I'm fairly certain I missed a couple of key plot points (you'll see why in a minute) and since I have not quite shaken off the Theatre Studies student within me, those drafts became incredibly long winded, boring and completely nonsensical if you haven't actually seen the play. I am therefore going to try to encapsulate what I saw with the minimum of fuss, bother, or surperfluous technical terminology.
First things first, I did not realise prior to this that Sam West was the director. Two Sams for the price of one! Sam West was my very favourite Waking the Dead crazy-guy, totally chilling. And then he was there for the Q&A thing at the end! I'm not sure I have any squee left in me...
The stage was a flat thrust stage (long and out into the audience), painted white and supposed to look like a rehearsal room. My initial thought was, admittedly, "mental ward!", but Sam West later contradicted that. I kinda like my interpretation better, but mainly because my own experiences of rehearsal rooms are far more traumatic than my experiences of hospital wards. But that's just me.
Anyways, onto the squee.
OK, so when he first came on stage (bearing a coffin and then mourning) I was excited. It was one of those, "OMG he's eight feet away from me!" fangirly moments that life needs more of. But it got so much better.
Wrestling, people. At first I thought I was hearing things, when his brother was talking about wrestling... but it turns out that Shakespeare is just as willing to get the men naked and writhing around the stage as the rest of us (*is struck down by vengeful Shakespearean lightning*). Seriously, though. I love stage combat, and they had this whole bit of it, with Sam and this other very muscular guy fighting, punching, kneeing, slapping, throttling and kicking all over the place. Not only that, but they were both sans shirts and very vocal. I wholeheartedly approved of Sam West's directorial approach to this scene. *cough*
Hehe, there was also a very cute "OMG a woman!" type moment when Rosalind (love-interest, Eve Best) gave Orlando (Sam Troughton) her string of pearls as a token of how much she enjoyed his wrestling (Rosalind: *channels audience*), when Orlando couldn't speak. So very, very cute.
There were so many brilliant touches from all the actors, I really wish I could write them all down. In fact, I wish I could open up my brain and let everybody just watch the damn thing, but since I can't do that, I can't share everything that was awesome without having a) the script to reference or b) a video of the production. SO all I can offer is a list of miscellaneous awesome, chiefly featuring Sam Troughton. Then I'll move on to the Talk Back thing, which will be equal parts adoration for Sam Troughton and Sam West. Who I now pretty much love.
Jacques (pronounced Jay-queeze, apparently) was really quite random in his high heels and feathered hat, but he did have lovely stubble (*is shallow) and was also quite menacing in a could-do-anything-at-any-moment way. Hehe, he also went and sat on the stairs leading from the back of the auditorium down to the stage at one point, and TOTALLY FREAKED OUT the girl he delivered his asides to. Coincidentally that same girl had sat practically next to my mum and me in the restaurant earlier. If she's you, hi!
Costume was truly awesome, and for most of the play Sam Troughton was barefoot. And he was wearing NAIL POLISH. On his TOES. I just about died.
Please take a moment to visualise the awesome of this costume: A very nearly completely open shirt, nicely-fitting cargo pants and bare, nail-polished feet. I am not a great perv, honest. It was just impossible to NOT STARE.
Oooh, for a moment of pure, unadulterated Sam-cute: During one of the scenes when Rosalind (pretending to be a man) was teaching Orlando (Sam) how to woo his woman (Rosalind), she threw a bouquet of flowers at him, which he totally failed to catch. But he covered it with a little karate-type hand movement which just about killed me and even made the actress giggle.
There was also this strange (but hilarious) Forest of Hats, from which various characters took hats at different times in order to change their appearance/attitude to a situation (which I think is quite a nifty idea, and worked really well in the play as a whole). One of this turned woman Rosalind into Saucy Man Rosalind, for example. Sam, for another wooing-lesson scene, put on a white cowboy hat. I WISHED I could take photos, I really did.
Another great scene with Man-Rosalind teaching Orlando to woo really built up the tension with the fast dialogue and moving all over the stage, and then culminated in a big gay SMOOCHIE. Except it wasn't really gay - BUT Orlando thought it was and had to run away quite quickly. Shakespeare, dudes. Shakespeare. (These scenes also bred a fair few plotbunnies. Why, brain? Why?!)
Sam and Jacques also came onto the stage together at one point, with Sam mimicking the high-heel walk. *explodes*
Oh, and Jacques offering round a packet of Polos was sheer genius. Loved that guy...
The night we chose to go was also the night when the play was signed for the deaf... and man did that signer work hard. There was just him, all on his own in a spotlight, signing EVERY WORD of the play. I was in awe, I really was. And then, in the second half, the character of Touchstone had a really long speech about the seven stages of a lie (or something to that effect). At the end of it, one character asked, "But what were the stages?" (again, roughly) and Touchstone looked up to the signer and went, "ready for this?" and then HURTLED through the last bit of speech, which the signer also whipped through as fast as he could, and got a round of applause from the audience as well as all the cast on stage. Brilliant!
I should also point out at this juncture that the kissing-fave was alive and well and made me all melty. ^_^
OMG... there was also DANCING. The whole cast got in a circle and did this really great folky sort of dance, changing directions, leaping into the air, pairing off, clapping... just brilliant and vibrant and totally loveable.
It does not end there... the last scene, after the plot was all worked out there was the Wedding Scene, in which all of the couples got married. Rosalind finally revealed that she was in fact a woman, but kept her man-clothes on, just added a veil to become womanly. For bonus awesome points, Orlando swapped his jacket for Rosalind's veil, blurring the gender issue once again. All the others then did it (except Jacques who already had his), before they all took their extra bits off and, with big grins all over the place, RAN off the stage through the big back door and into the Unknown World beyond.
Applause rang out, and I think they came back on to bow about three times, which was really cool.
The play is moving to Stratford next week, I think, to be part of the Complete Works festival. If you can go and see it, GO AND SEE IT. I know this was mostly Sam Troughton based squee, but the others were excellent too... and some of the uses of props and space and, omg, the LIGHTING... it was just beautiful. There was also all sorts of things dropping from the ceiling (rose petals, sand, an orange) that enhanced the depth of the procuction. Seeing it from the side, as I did, was also quite fascinating, since there were times when actors broken that golden rule and had their backs to us... but they were all moving around and changing direction so it wasn't an issue. In her last speech Rosalind practically prowled around the stage, inviting the women to like the bits of the play they wanted to, and to kiss men with nice beards. She then chose a random man with a nice beard, kissed him, and ran off. :D
The language was handled beautifully, reminding me once again that, yes, Shakespeare is the very best, and no amount of classroom word-slaughter can change that.
That took longer than I wanted... so, I will post the Talk Back section at a later date, complete with verbatim quotes and more squee and giggling.... *goes off to relive wrestling scene*