Queer production of As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe

[PotteringPondering]

Spent the evening at Shakespeare’s Globe, at what turned out to be a queer production of As You Like It.

Almost all the actors were cast as characters of the opposite sex, and several appeared to be trans actors. In the play, some characters have to disguise themselves as the opposite sex, so it was impossible to follow who’s who (‘Hang on, so that woman with a beard is meant to be a male character, who then is disguised as a woman; no, wait a minute…’). There were a few good individual performances, but artistically it was a complete dog’s dinner.

It was shot through with sexualised queer stylings and dances, and ended with a speech (that definitely wasn’t written by Shakespeare) about how we’re all part of a big queer family, whether or not we wear nail varnish.

Lots of kids were in the audience.

It felt a little like finding yourself in a recruitment party for a transgressive sex cult, when what you really wanted was Shakespeare.

FFS!! So we had a non binary Joan of Arc and now this shit. How much more ridiculous can The Globe become…?

It sounds very confusing!

To be fair, the actors in Shakespeare's day would have been male, so Rosalind and Celia would have been played by men, pretending to be women, pretending to be men etc...so it is not without precedent I suppose!

It seems to be the done thing for people to feel the need to shake things up a bit with Shakespeare these days...

Thanks for the heads up. I was going to go but I'll give it a swerve now. Shame I was looking forward to going back to the Globe.

Plays like As You Like It and Twelfth Night are already full of nods and winks about boys playing girls playing boys and the ridiculousness of gender stuff (from a 16th century perspective). As it’s written. Nothing else is needed text wise.

I really don’t mind different settings of the plays as there’s always a new perspective that I get from them. Plus it emphasises the universality of the human experience in that you can get them to work either via the original practices that The Globe did in Mark Rylance’s early days as AD, or by modern settings (the Adrian Lester Henry V was set in modern times and coincided with the invasion of Iraq and was very thought provoking). I can happily tolerate a bit of editing of the text to chop out some of the more problematic parts that modern audiences wouldn’t find acceptable (bits of anti semitism for example). I’ve enjoyed gender blind casting at The Globe eg Kathryn Hunter as Richard III or Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero. But when you start writing new speeches or messing around with casting decisions just to be edgy or different, it takes away from the integrity of the play and it just becomes a production “based on” Shakespeare.

And now I sound like one of those pretentious wanker groundlings in hats who laugh at jokes no one else does because they only work in Elizabethan English. Sorry, I’m not that precious about Shakespeare, but after all he did say “the play’s the thing”.

Yanbu.

He wrote so many plays, many of which I've never seen produced ever, like some of the historical ones and some of the nicher tragedies. Why take a famous one and make it fresh and different when you could just take one of the lesser-known ones and that'll be super fresh as it is?

All female parts were played by men in Shakespeare originally

Yes because it was illegal for women to act on the stage. So there’s always a context of misogyny going on right from the start.

Yes I agree. The plays were written with this in mind too

i can’t deny the misogyny in the plays is frustrating however much I try and accept the context of the time they were written. Fiesty women like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing or Katherine in Taming of the Shrew become doe eyed, silent and compliant at the end of the plays when they “get their man”. Setting the archetype for books and movies and TV programs for hundreds of years.

so yes, enough misogyny in Shakespeare as it is without adding in any more thank you very much.

All the world is a... cult recruitment ground?

The Northern Broadsides did almost exactly the same thing about 18 months ago, so it's not even an original take.

Sounds tedious, will give this a miss!

Why does everything have to be "queered"? I would love to know what normal everyday gay people* think of this.

• people who crack on with their lives and don't make their sexuality the only facet of their personality.

I will forgive directors of Shakespeare practically anything tbh and might try and see this (though presumably sold out). It does sound a bit tedious though.

I went to a production of the Comedy of Errors about 40 years ago that added a couple of nonscripted jokes so it's clearly something people feel able to do (not sure how).

Do not worry too much. Even the Gen Z teenagers I KNOW are rolling eyes 🙄

Saw a Globe on tour production of Julius Caesar last year. Couldn't figure out who was who because each actor randomly male or female seemed to be playing two or three characters wearing similar/ same costumes. There was some additional drama as a member of the audience fell over and had to be stretchered off by members of the cast using a prop... The cast began their scene again.
We got the impression they hadn't had someone watch it and tell them honestly how hard it was to follow. There were good bits, it's a shame this gender woo messes everything up.

They do this all the time now. It’s basically every production is an attempt to highlight how “right on” they are and so it completely loses its impact (and makes it potentially very difficult for a student approaching it for the first time actually to understand what’s going on). I went a few weeks ago and was struck by what a high percentage of the audience were clearly tourists. That’s where they’re heading: to be the London Eye of theatre and not a serious venue.

But the ones playing female parts didn't have full on beards. They'd be made up so that you could suspend your disbelief and pretend they were women. Like trouser roles in opera - alto voice women singing as young men - they'd be convincingly masculine for the show.

It sounds like the actors on stage in op's show had deliberately confusing gender presentation as a kind of gotcha for the audience - challenging their preconceived ideas about whether women can have beards. The confusion, of whether the actor was supposed to be playing a man or a woman, was a feature not a bug.

My goodness I'd rather do pretty much anything with my evening

I hope that all the woke nonsense alienates most people so much that they won’t pay to watch it, so it dies a death and normal life can resume. I don’t go to theatres any more for this reason

They'll then blame the low revenues on pretty much anything but bad art.

Low tourism post brexit or post pandemic.
Cost of living.
Reduced government/LA subsidies.

No one will think "actually maybe my show was just a bit crappie"

Yes, and the streets ran with open sewers, people had amputations without anaesthesia, about a third of women succumbed to complications of pregnancy.

Women on the stage would have been seen as the equivalent of prostitutes.
Shall we reinstate these conditions as well?

The Globe is shit now and is obsessed by gender. I have heard the same re several of their recent productions.

I have nothing against gender blind casting or indeed queer themed Shakespeare when it is done well which it often is. Mixing up genders can be interesting or it can simply be a way to get the best actor into a part. I recently saw a touring Tempest done with 4 actors including a female Prospero and male Miranda. It was great. But I am hearing time and again that the Globe castings are obscuring the story and putting actors into parts they can’t carry.

Presumably it would go down even worse with tourists than with local audiences!

Ugh I hate the making of things incomprehensible, it shows such a disrespect for one’s audience.

This is what pisses me off about this whole movement so much that they think they are somehow ‘challenging/educating’ us with this oh so daring gender/ queer /whatever stuff like the 80s/90s never happened… and all the other times in history when e.g. men wore make up and heels.
PP right about the GenZs though - it will end. They have had enough.

Sounds totally tedious