As You Like It

Some of these BBC Television Shakespeare adaptations are a bit dry and dusty. But this one was really dynamic and engaging. Helen Mirren is the perfect and most beautiful Rosalind, the best I have seen. I love the songs they composed for the Shakespearean lyrics. There aren't many AYLI versions available to watch on screen so this is a must watch. Along with the 2010 Globe version which is available online.

This production benefits from great use of natural settings and a cast that knows how to make "the bard" sing for those of us not steeped in medieval English. The music is an added bonus. The director included the wrestling match instead of just hearing about it, no doubt to provide a little bit of action to what is otherwise mostly talk. The pacing is a little slow at times, but since we're not really worried about the plot it doesn't matter. Helen Mirren sets the tone for all the actors in terms of really getting into the role. The emphasis is not so much the cynicism but the "looking at oneself from the outside." We are encouraged to look at ourselves thusly.

This 1978 production is a sparkling version of a great play. Indeed, apart from some unnecessary abridgments of Touchstone's coruscating orations, this production is nearly flawless. The natural settings endow the play with a genuinely rustic atmosphere. (The fact that Helen Mirren occasionally has to wave insects away from her is something which contributes to that atmosphere.)

Arthur Hewlett, who appears to be on the verge of death in his performance as Adam, in fact lived for nearly two decades beyond the making of this production. Richard Pasco, who steals nearly every scene in which he appears as Jacques, died in 2014 at the age of 88. Helen Mirren is at her usual level of excellence in her starring role. Angharad Rees, who died of cancer in 2012, is likewise excellent as Celia/Aliena. Brian Stirner is not at quite the same level (with two or three slightly misjudged renderings of lines), but he performs commendably as Orlando. Kudos are due to everyone else in the cast as well, in a production that does not include any bad performances.

What a great idea to shoot this play on location and mostly outdoors. The green meadows and leafy forests fill the production with the breath of life, and a remarkable natural feel. Not only does the outdoor filming suit the pastoral setting and themes of this play. By staging everything on location, and in an unsophisticated way, it makes us all the more attuned to how a script and a company of actors can transform a familiar, real-life location into something else. A fictional scenario suddenly becomes real before our eyes. Seeing this production, it's a reminder that your neighborhood park could easily serve as the stage for drama and high-flown rhetoric.

Who cares about the technical difficulties? When Rosalind has to brush aside a fly unwelcomed by the production, it's all the more charming, the way it increases the realism and spontaneity.

All this comes through even more because this is a largely straightforward recording of a play, not an earnest work of cinema. I'm all for fluid and creative camera work, but here the mostly static camera is the better choice, making us feel more that we are attending a live play outdoors, not a movie that's clearly removed from our reality.

This is exciting...and frankly, As You Like It needs all the excitement that can be supplied. I'm not exactly a Shakespeare connoisseur, but it seems to me that this play is one of the fluffier, flimsier plays of his I've seen.

For such a long production, very little happens. It's light in tone but lacks the comedy, scheming, and twists of other plots like A Midsummer Night's Dream. For any of the interesting stuff in this play (some well-written dialogue, a few gestures towards action or suspense, gender-bending, even pseudo-lesbianism way ahead of its time), you can probably find some other Shakespeare play that does it better. Even by the standards of the time, it breaks credibility that Rosalind's lover and her own father can't see through her boy-disguise and recognize her. The play feels like either a test run written early in the Bard's career or a rehash from the end. I would've had a much harder time watching this production if filmed indoors on sets, even artistic or otherwise well-made ones.

On the other hand, this play stands out because it has wrestling. Wrestling?! In Shakespeare?! I guess so! And not that amateur wrestling like students do for school -- think pro wrestling, but not fake! (It's all the funnier to see lowbrow pro wrestling in highbrow theatre like Shakespeare.) This TV movie treats us to a fully-staged match starring Darth Vader. And I don't mean James Earl Jones, a noted actor for whom a Shakespeare performance would be nothing unexpected. No, we get the man in the black suit himself, David Prowse, whose role even requires him to speak many lines! Yes, Darth Vader does Shakespeare!

Prowse holds his own in both the fighting and reciting, although you can tell he's not the talented professional that the other actors are. Speaking of whom, they are the other chief strong point for this movie. (Oddly, though, they didn't reshoot a few scenes in which Helen Mirren stumbles on her lines.)

Also notable for Le Beau, the twittiest character ever; a Dana Carvey lookalike playing leading man Orlando; and the leading ladies decked out in court dresses with headpieces you have to see to believe, like something taken from a sci-fi picture or maybe Hammer House of Horrors.

This is where it all began. BBC producer Cedric Messina was shooting a drama at Glamis Castle when he thought, "What a great place to shoot 'As You Like It.'" And so the idea for the complete series of Shakespeare telecasts was born.

Unfortunately, an all-too-real Forest of Arden here provides an impediment to the play. An artificial meditation on identity and appearance, "As You Like It" has one of Shakespeare's lamest plots, with poor characterizations, perfunctory incidents and sloppy story resolution. "Love's Labour's Lost" and "Twelfth Night" are as solid as tanks by comparison.

Video equipment was not as portable in the late 1970s as it is now, and the whole exercise is sapped by the actors' battle against Nature and logistics. A sense of strain is omnipresent. The characters are often physically too far apart and must yell at each other, Helen Mirren has to wave gnats away from her face repeatedly during a major speech, and a lush carpeting of ferns belies text references to a harsh outdoor existence. Basically, you come out of this play humming the trees.

Performances across the board are OK, but never better than that. Helen Mirren shows reliable professionalism as Rosalind and Richard Pasco's bilious affect is uniquely suitable to the character of Jacques.

Also noteworthy is the Banished Duke of Tony Church, who recorded frequently for the now-forgotten Marlowe Society of Cambridge's complete Shakespeare series on Argo LPs. And 6'7" David Prowse, fresh off his first appearance as Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars," shows up unexpectedly as Charles the Wrestler, performing the Shakespeare well in his own voice, and not overdubbed by James Earl Jones.

Budget considerations meant that "As You Like It" and "Henry VIII" would be the only plays in this series shot on location. BBC studio drama would come to an end in the early 1990's, but a production like this one points up the advantages of staying indoors.