As You Like It despite brilliant jokes and fantastic Bob Dylan impersonation still a long sit #hf10

 By Wijbrand Schaap, Photo Joan Marcus

So we don't have that. In the Netherlands. So many good actors of name and fame to be able to fill an entire Shakespeare comedy with top actors, right down to the finest edelfiguration. Ok, we come a long way with our Pierre Bokma's, our Gijs Scholten van Aschats, a Lineke Rijxman, Mariek Heebink and Ariane Schluter, and flat Elsie de Brauw, Jacob Derwig and Fedja van Huet not out, but they are either in all sorts of companies whose leaders cannot get through the same door, or they are playing abroad and in any case, they are all pretty much the same age. So we have a problem that Sam Mendes did not have for his 'Bridge Project'. He has all ages and all persuasions from both the US and Great Britain at his disposal, and those names are again so big that for the huge cost that The Bridge Project entails, it's easy for a couple or so major festivals, governments and sponsors to reach for their wallets.

Jealous? A little. But then jealous the way the Dutch ladies in the audience looked at the impossible beauty of Egyptian Amal Maher, at her opening concert on 1 June, in other words: full of admiration. Because these actors are so terribly good and terribly close. They play Shakespeare's white verses as if that four-hundred-year-old poetry is still their everyday language and they do so unamplified, which is another innovation in Dutch theatre, where in recent years no actor dares to go on stage without a sticky microphone.

Visitors to As You Like it, on Wednesday 2 June at Amsterdam's sold-out Stadsschouwburg theatre, thus got value for money, at least in terms of cast, acting talent and general care of the evening's theatre. Whether they were the best 'As You Like It‘ ever have seen, however, I venture to doubt. Director Sam Mendes has not only chosen to play the entire text down to the last syllable, he also chooses to do so at a pace that is at least a factor of two slower than four hundred years ago. However good that may be for intelligibility, it also makes for quite a sit-down at over three hours long.

On top of that, in terms of laugh-or-shoot, Mendes is more about shooting than laughing. In his view, Shakespeare's comedy about a young duke's daughter disguised as a boy playing a thrilling game of seduction and sexual confusion with her dreamlover is, above all, a play about flight to the countryside that was as popular in Shakespeare's time as it is today.

Shakespeare also questions this, but Mendes makes the difference between the drab court life and the ideal countryside a bit too big, and also shows a bit too clearly that Shakespeare also had his doubts about the depth of the separation between the two. There is quite a bit of violence in the first part, and Shakespeare's humour is conveyed very subtly indeed. Too bad, because As You Like It can be hilarious, if played with irony, and that typically British sense of humour seems to have been lost by director Mendes when he crossed over to America.

Americans don't know irony and that fizzles out with Shakespeare. The somewhat cruder American humour does not suit Shakespeare, and so we are left with seriousness with a touch of British irony. So, despite a few brilliant jokes and a fantastic Bob Dylan impersonation by British actor Stephan Dillane, this As You Like It was quite a long sit.

As You Like it can still be seen on 5 and 6 June, with Saturday's performance starting at 15:00.

Information from Holland Festival