It’s the Glastonbury Festival this weekend but we went to a more cultural version of this midsummer celebration of tribal identity – the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of As You Like It in Stratford-on-Avon. Every thing the RSC do is amazing, and this was quite quite wonderful. Drawing on Shakespeare’s deep affinity with the folk customs and seasonal rhythms of the forest of Arden – the area around Stratford – the RSC dreamed up a modernised, Glastonbury-like, recreation of the earth celebrations of pagan England – a world of horned men, primal dancing, cross-dressing and fertility rites, exquisite music by Laura Marling and the kind of audience connection that only fantastically well-done live theatre can provide. An energetic celebration of the spirit of midsummer.
Coming out into the dark, swans float asleep on the River Avon; the trees of Warwickshire are in full sail, like ships on an inland sea; a deer crosses the road as we drive home; the year is at its height. Here's the trailer and some of Laura Marling's music for the play.
Coming out into the dark, swans float asleep on the River Avon; the trees of Warwickshire are in full sail, like ships on an inland sea; a deer crosses the road as we drive home; the year is at its height. Here's the trailer and some of Laura Marling's music for the play.
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