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.

It sounds immensely tedious.

One of the things that is so irritating about this is that on the one hand, we have this free-for-all "ooh look aren't we daring and transgressive" approach, alongside an authoritarian view that apparently says straight actors can't play gay characters and "cis" actors can't play trans characters. They should at least aim for some consistency.

There would have been a lot of jeering, heckling and drunken misbehaviour at the real Globe if the lower class ‘groundlings’ in the audience thought the performance was shite. I’m sure it would be entirely in keeping with the ‘authenticity’ of The Globe experience if the audience today made their feelings known in a similar fashion. Though I’d hazard a guess that you’d be asked to leave if you so much as rolled your eyes.

Good point! Very democratic review system, who needs a column in the Times when you've got some rotten veg haha

I was very British about it all, and whispered to the American tourist next to me: 'I'm pretty sure Shakespeare didn't write "We're all part of a big queer family".'

I'm now regretting not going full authentic Globe.

Take some rotten tomatoes next time

A putrid Globe artichoke. Now that would have a poetic appropriateness to it.

I’m sick of it, personally.

And ‘queerness’ and gender have sod all to do with LGB rights.

Love your erudite contributions to this thread, and your username.

I now plan to identify as a pretentious wanker groundling in a hat who laughs at jokes no one else does.

😂

I stopped watching A Midsummer Night's Dream when I realised Helena had been recast as a gay man (that really does not work in the play as the couples are attracted to each other, e.g. Lysander intends to marry Hermione). Then a trans fairy turned up, a large man in a pale blue tutu and wings. I gave up at this point - it was on TV so I could!

Shakespeare wrote no such thing and we are not. 'Queering' is dangerous, intending the breaking down of boundaries as if this were always a good thing. Paedophilia is acceptable to Queer theory.

You are very kind, but “erudite” makes me smile. I bloody hated Shakespeare at school, couldn’t see the point or relevance of thirty bored teenagers reading language that was so obscure the opposite page was full of explanatory notes.

i got dragged to a matinee at The Globe not long after it opened as it was only a fiver. To say it was a revelation would not be an understatement. Seeing the plays in an approximation of how they would have been staged originally suddenly made sense to me - and now I’ve seen many plays in many of different places but I hold the Globe in great affection for being that place that turned it on for me. To see them forgetting their original mandate to use the space to explore the plays in ways you couldn’t do in a modern theatre makes me very sad.

You just know it will get a five star review from the Guardian, though.

The RSC recently had an age-blind production of this play which was at least a more original approach to ‘blind’ casting.

I don't like gender blind casting at the best of times. Even when it's clear who the actor is supposed to be, I keep thinking, "woman pretending to be a bloke/man pretending to be a woman," and it's a real distraction.

Possibly I have seen it where that didn't twig for me, and I am ok with that. I am entirely happy with actors playing any cross sex, cross race, or cross species role, with or without the aid of theater tools like make-up and prosthetics, so long as I find it convincing, which is to say I am not constantly aware of the subterfuge. But it is not an easy task in most cases to accomplish. Men dressed as giraffes always seem to look like men dressed as giraffes, unless you are going for an extremely abstract kind of production.

I sometimes feel like we are in a period like some mid 20th century film and television, where it was normal to rewrite classics to make them more palatable for the masses, making Sherlock Holmes a romantic lead or whatever. It was pretty shit productions then, and it is now too.

😆

😁
and all the penis-people and womb-havers merely players ….

Every generation really does think it has invented sex.

There's a Charles Paris mystery which takes the mickey out of a 'progressive' director doing something like this to the play and that's years old.

Iirc the twist there is that both the male and female roles end up played by one egotistical man.

Nowt new under the sun.

The never ending arrogance of those who believe they're enlightened enough to 'correct' everyone and everything, even those who died centuries ago, because obviously they know so much better and have come along to fix things.

Bores.

I saw a similar production of Henry V a few years ago. Loved seeing women playing the monarch and other leaders — that looked realistic and inspiring.

But it was ruined for me by seeing the princess played by a bearded man. That was just nonsense, and pointless. Theatre is meant to create a world you lose yourself in, even while it may challenge your preconceptions. Women as war leaders, fine. A bearded adult male claiming to be a princess, no way.

A bearded adult male claiming to be a princess, no way

I'm sure it's all meant to be brave and transgressive and boundary pushing and make us think but the only thing it makes me think is 'Grow the fuck up.'

Oh yes. Forgot to add there was a rope pulley above the audience, where hanging letters with inspirational queer messages about many ways to love were displayed, while the actors sashayed below.

Needless to say, not lines from the play.

I'm all in favour of reimagining Shakespeare, and a bit of gender nonconformity. But this felt like a triumph of propaganda over art. Like a Soviet film about tractor quotas. Or a cheesy 70s evangelistic rock concert where everything builds to the altar-call.

At this point I would genuinely prefer pro-agricultural propaganda. Give me the-harvest-needs-You ads over Costa mastectomy cartoons any day.

Sorry to sound flippant. It's really dreadful if you think too hard about it.

They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays ALL the parts

This Lesbian is also dead sick of it too.
I have zero interest in the TQ+

I'm convinced people are going to hate us for all this crap.

it's the preachiness that's so irritating. We ever so slightly older people need to be educated cause we wouldn't otherwise know how to challenge stereotypes - a bit like that recent episode of Casualty where the trans woman ( i.e. a biological male) is first really really gracious about not going on the march because it's for women ( as if) and then saves the day by jumping in and rescuing said women from nasty types....