It is not often you hear Taylor Swift and the Beach Boys in Shakespeare. But pop music works up the romantic atmosphere in Yolanda Mercy’s adaptation of the pastoral comedy, directed by Paul Hart. Staged in the Watermill’s verdant grounds (weeping willows, ducks, gushing water), the actors sing and play a blend of folksy guitar, ukulele, bass, harp and flute.
Its bigger message is on environmental change and Katie Lias’s set design carries that symbolism: the court, filled with empty oil drums, is part construction site and part derelict greenhouse where characters wear hard-hats and hi-vis vests. The lush forest of Arden blends into the theatre’s grounds so that we are not only told that “all the world’s a stage” but understand that this stage is our own world, too, and needs rewilding. Actors walk among us to blur the boundaries further.
When the banished Duke Senior (Jamie Satterthwaite) speaks of learning lessons from nature in Arden (“tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything”), there are echoes of our own state of exile during the pandemic that, for some, revealed birdsong and the proximities of nature.
The cast exudes an easy chemistry in this story of tyrant siblings, crisscrossing passions and disguise, the actors becoming increasingly sure in their parts. Omar Baroud, who plays both Duke Frederick and the more hapless Silvius, performs a fantastic double act with Ami Okumura Jones as Phebe, the subject of Silvius’s unrequited passion. There are other sparkling turns, from Emma Barclay’s Touchstone, who plays the harp and gives us a charming puppet drama, to Katherine Jack’s steely Rosalind.
The only off-note comes with Mercy’s epilogue on climate and sustainability. Actors bring on placards and it feels like a jarring lecture, but is soon swallowed up by a rousing last song – a rendition of Set My Soul on Fire.
A fine example of how to modernise Shakespeare, all the more spellbinding for the greater stage of the natural world around us.
As You Like It is at the Watermill theatre, Newbury, until 24 July.
