As You Like It — in Newcastle

Sub­si­di­ary delights of going to New­castle are the excel­lent Roots Music, which always has a good selec­tion of jazz and a suberb sec­tion of Brit­ish folk albums,  and the ever-expanding Eldon centre which gets less attract­ive and more con­fus­ing and less like any­where I want to be every time I make the mis­take of going into it.  Stick to Grainger Mar­ket, JG!

But the Royal Shakespeare Co doing As You Like it was excel­lent.  Very bare sta­ging, com­pared to the sump­tu­ous Kaffe Fas­set set of a pre­vi­ous pro­duc­tion, but it very much suited the hard, black-clad court of Duke Fre­d­er­ick, the usurper, and the wintry, few-leaved Forest of Arden.  I found myself think­ing that the main play­ers were all extremely com­pet­ent but none stood out. On the other hand, Jacques, played as Billy Con­nelly by For­bes Mas­son, Touch­stone (Richard Katz) and Corin (Geof­frey Fresh­wa­ter) brought real mean­ing to the parts, Corin’s hon­est work­ing man well emphas­ised, Touch­stone really mad, and Jacques a mel­an­colic with a good line in satir­ical humour.( I don’t think it does to play Jacques too ser­i­ously).   And the RSC always speaks the lines so clearly, they always have, so under­stand­ing is made easy.