AS YOU LIKE IT (THE SHOW MUST GO ONLINE)*****

By Megan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwk8nTEmIuI

Available until: Indefinitely

My name is Megan and I am nine and I am probably the youngest person who will post on this blog. I know I am too young really but my mum and my granny and my older siblings are going to read this and post it for me.

The Show Must Go Online is a company that was formed in lockdown in order to do online live readings of Shakespeare’s plays once a week. Although most of the lockdown restrictions have been lifted, they are still continuing with the plays. I am really happy they are doing this as I have enjoyed all the plays very much (apart from Titus Andronicus which my mum thinks is too violent for me) and we can’t go to the theatre at the moment as they are all closed.

TSMGO have done more than half of Shakespeare’s plays now. Anyone is allowed to sign up to be in a play even if they are not professional actors. You just fill in a form then you get emails to tell you what the next play is. I haven’t signed up but I think if you want to be in the play you can express your interest and say if there’s a particular role you like and then the casting director Sydney Aldridge puts a cast together. There is no audition process but they try to get a good mix of levels of experience and they do not discriminate based on gender or race. They are very pro LGBTQIA+ as well which makes me very happy because some of my brothers are gay.

All the shows are filmed live on Zoom and all the characters are in a particular scene are displayed onscreen with their role title and their name too if it fits but there is a cast list in the description so you can always find out who is playing who and what their twitter name is if they have one. My family and I have discovered lots of new favourite actors and we feel extra excited when we have the chance to see them again in another online play. I don’t think we will go back and review every play but they are all really good and worth watching. My family’s favourites include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, Richard II and Romeo & Juliet but they are all really good.

As You Like It is a special play for my family. It was the first Shakespeare play my mum read (when she was younger than me). I have an auntie who is called Rosalind after a character in this play. My grandad played Le Beau in a production at his school. And now my first ever theatre review is of the same play.

The cast have limited rehearsal time, just a few days, but you would never know it from their fluent, confident and brilliant performances. This is one of Shakespeare’s comedies and the cast delivered the lines with great wit and perfect timing. Phoebe Elliot commanded her corner of the Zoom screen brilliantly as Rosalind. She was convincing both as Rosalind herself and as a lady pretending to be a boy called Ganymede. Michael Ahomka-Lindsay was very lovely as Orlando. He was not a wimp at all but he showed a real vulnerability as well as real love for Rosalind which really made me invest in him as a character.

I especially liked Tamsin Lynes as Celia. She was sweet and bubbly and the character I’d most like to be friends with so Rosalind is very lucky that Celia is her friend. Nat Kennedy (who is a lady) was very characterful as Touchstone. The performance was slightly exaggerated but just the right amount, enough to get the full sense of his character but not too much for him to be convincing as a real person. Even when Touchstone was not speaking Ms Kennedy kept attracting my attention with her brilliant reactions. Valerie Andrews and Jason Blackwater had such a great rapport as Phebe and Silvius and I totally forgot they have probably never met each other.

Candice Handy gave Oliver a powerful screen presence and although she is a beautiful lady she was just simply a man and you never forgot it. Before I started watching this series, the idea of women playing men in plays surprised me a bit but when you start watching you see the character, not the actor. It doesn’t matter that Oliver (or Touchstone or Jaques or Duke Frederick) is played by a lady, I just instantly accept them as a man and I admire the acting as good acting, I never think ‘She did a good job for a lady, I just think ‘She did an amazing, brilliant job, what a great actor and a great performance’.

I could mention every single person in the cast, they were all so good and it wasn’t just about the acting, there was some genuinely beautiful singing too. At one point two characters sang together which very difficult on Zoom. As always there was some brilliant and really inventive costume and make-up, the characters used props which they were able to ‘pass to each other’, they disappeared from one person’s screen and appearing in another and again the timing was perfect. The cast also go to great efforts with the staging, setting up the camera so foliage is visible. I don’t usually like fighting scenes but watching the fights on TSMGO is like watching choreography and I love dancing. Luke Heys (Charles) and Michael Ahomka-Lindsay did a fight scene wearing brightly coloured masks with background noises and it worked really well.

I also need to mention the Ensemble who play lots of different small roles and the Swings who are always ready to take over any role if someone’s computer stops working. They are all talented and brave people and I have seen quite a few swings swinging into action in different plays and they always do really well. I know they help in rehearsals too.

But it’s not just the actors, TSMGO also has a really strong production team. Enric Ortuno took charge of the fight direction and stunts, he always makes them look convincing. Emily Ingram is stage manager and master of props and she’s a big part of the reason each production is so seamless. Sarah Peachey the producer is there for every show and has so much to do including registering donations, recording questions from the audience on live chat so she can relay them to the cast and probably a million other things we don’t get told about. I think Ms Peachey is very efficient.

The director is Robert Myles who introduces almost every show (he had the night off from that when he played Bottom, that was a really remarkable performance, my brother Jack says he died nearly as many times as a character in a programme I’m not allowed to watch called South Park but I’m sure it isn’t half as good as Shakespeare). Mr Myles approaches every play with so much love and enthusiasm and knows them so well and has such good judgement about when you can bring in a bit of comedy and just how far you can push it so you’re right on the edge without going over the top. He is really inventive and it sounds like he really encourages his cast to be inventive too but he knows when to say no and how to say it tactfully without making them have diva strops. He must be a brilliant and really fun director to work with.

The next play is Hamlet and I’m really looking forward to that one. I know it is very sad and some of it is too difficult for me but I liked the performances from Read for the Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company (on iPlayer) and Shakespeare Happy Hours and I feel like I understand the play a little bit more each time I watch it and I can’t wait to see what TSMGO will do with it.