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.

Ha! Brilliant.

I've developed the impression that theatres have given up on attracting new audiences who haven't already seen all the most popular Shakespeare plays multiple times. So now the focus is on staging the plays in a fresh way for audiences of jaded people who know As You Like It by heart.

We ever so slightly older people need to be educated cause we wouldn't otherwise know how to challenge stereotypes

I mean, it's not as if those of us dinosaurs who grew up in the 60s and 70s saw any stereotypes challenged at all, is it?

Someone has probably already pointed out that Shakespeare's female parts were played by BOYS, not by MEN. Beardless youths with unbroken voices, in fact.

As a digression, consider Lady Macbeth's first appearance in the play: Shakespeare supported the young teen actor by giving him a letter to read aloud. If he could make his legs carry him out on to the stage, he had a crib for his first few lines. Any nervous trembling or a wobbly voice would be put down to good acting of strong emotions.

In the 80s, anyone who suggested that makeup, long hair & frills made a man into a woman or that short hair & a suit made a woman into a man would have been seen as talking regressive bollocks.

I think the speech about queer families sounds naff and preachy.

The rest sounds fun. Why on earth not have some fun with Shakespeare? You really struggled to follow a play because of some cross-dressing? Really?

It's pretty clear Shakespeare was having fun with cross-dressing. It's absurd to think that people were politely 'suspending their disbelief' and watching boys got up to look as much like women as possible. For one thing, Shakespearean stage makeup is pretty stylised - it's not realistic - and for another: why the fuck would there be constant jokes about cross-dressing if it wasn't meant to be funny?!

I think it would absolutely make it harder to follow if you’re having to remember who is a character who is a woman dressed as a man and who is meant to be an actual man but is being played by a woman. Especially if the woman dressed as a man is being played by a man. It’s probably easier to do without confusion in plays where gender isn’t already a main theme.

I'm sure you'd need to think carefully when you cast your play. But, FWIW, I saw MND last night with a cast of four, who were all playing whatever gender came handy, and it was fine. And that's another play with gender as a theme, though to a lesser degree.

I don't honestly believe someone who can follow Shakespeare in general would be totally thrown by this sort of cross-gender casting. I can believe they might be thrown simply because the play was a bit rubbish; that's fair. But I don't believe it's inherently too complicated to do it this way.

You weren’t seeing it for the first time though were you?!

My six-year-old was.

I am totally in favour of taking kids to Shakespeare but they get different things out of it to adults ime. A 6 year old is going to be better than an adult at enjoying it without being able to follow it fully.

Anyway as I said below mixing up genders in casting can work fine, as it has done in many productions I have seen. But I don’t really know why you’re being sceptical about it obscuring the meaning in other productions, and some plays are trickier than others in this respect.
The gender of the actors is only one of the many things that can obscure or communicate the story (I’m sure we’ve all seen those productions where they’re all in identical military uniforms and you can’t follow differences of family or status) but in some plays it can have a big impact, and if you’re new to the play it has more of an effect than if you know it like the back of your hand.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think there's a place for different kinds of Shakespeare. If I were taking a group of GCSE students to see their set text, I wouldn't be likely to choose the Globe's version - I'd want something less cluttered up with interpretation.

But there is a ton of Shakespeare being performed. It's not as if, if you missed this version of As You Like It, you'd never have the chance to see it again, done differently.

I can see the value in trying different approaches that might bring in new audiences, or might attract people to Shakespeare who'd not liked the plays before.

"what turned out" - did you not look at the website / promo stuff? So ignorant. It's a play, they are acting.

Cross post. I'm sceptical because, TBH, it sounds to me as if the OP took umbrage at this turning out to be a 'queer production' and decided she wouldn't like it on principle. Could be wrong about that.

I saw an RSC production a couple of years ago of one of the comedies, cant remember if it was 'All's Well That Ends Well' and they'd messed around with the sexes too. I've seen a lot of Shakespeare but I found it really hard to follow and it made no sense. I guess all the passing fads show up in our culture, however silly they are.

I totally agree there’s a place for lots of different approaches. I am just not sure the Globe is the right place for this approach, given its audiences.

Mmm, maybe so.

It's not really a very original or interesting approach though. Gender swapping has been done forever, it's like the go to thing dumb young actors reach for when they want to be edgy. They were doing it 30 years ago.

And you can't go to any artistic event, or museum, these days without it being "queered" which usually means shoehorning in irrelevant stuff. Queer plants etc.

It's so transparently about uncreative people jumping on bandwagons, and trying to secure arts funding, that it's really depressing.

When Dd did Macbeth for GCSE, the one they watched was a very grainy black and white Thames tv production with a young Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in it as it was the best one that concentrated on the script.
Ian McKellen popped up decades later for Richard III but the teacher had then to discuss everything that was different in that production.

agree @Rudderneck its all about the bids for funding. It’s getting boring now.

Well, in that case, Shakespeare's not original or creative either, is he?

Surely, any approach - including cross-gender casting - is either successful because it's done well, or it fails because it's done badly. This play may well have done it badly, but I get the impression from the OP that she's affronted that it was done at all.

You can do really clever, original things with cross-gender, I think. The play I've just seen had the actor who played Theseus also play Titania (Theseus is usually doubled up with Oberon), and it was a really clever little detail - usually the doubling up of the characters reinforces the misogyny of the men, but pairing Theseus and Titania made it feel as if Theseus got a taste of his own medicine. It's just an example, but there would be others.

That's it. I took my teenager thinking it would be a good example of a conventional production, or possibly an authentic historical production. It was Julius Caesar so she wanted to see togas and cloaks. They didn't look like senior military leaders, more like crusties kitted out at the army surplus store.

But ... would they have been wearing togas and cloaks? I know they do on I, Claudius and so on (and I know there's an image from Shakespeare's day that might be showing some attempt at historical dress onstage). But isn't it quite as likely they'd have been wearing sixteenth-century standard issue?

They did Theseus/Titania and Hippolyta/Oberon at the temporary Rose in York before the pandemic! It worked great. But no longer feels original to me 😉