As You Like It: Re-imagining Arden in Australian Space

Abstract

The Forest of Arden as evoked in Shakespeare's As You Like It exhibits a demonstrably ambivalent attitude towards ‘nature’. However, the play's stage-production history, well into the twentieth century, reflects an unproblematic and deeply nostalgic identification of Arden with the English pastoral setting. That this has been the case even in Australia is the paradox explored by and challenged in the present article. By first establishing the play's fundamental ambivalence on the subject of the human relationship with nature, it goes on to examine the ways contemporary Australian discourses of settlement and unsettlement have inflected the meanings made possible through the play in recent times. This is effected through a critical survey of Australian stage productions from the late twentieth century, concluding with two detailed case studies from its close: Simon Phillips' production for the Sydney Theatre Company (1996), and Neil Armfield's for Company B, Belvoir Street (1999).

Notes

1. Anon., Examiner and Melbourne Weekly News, 15 August 1863.

4. This and all subsequent references to William Shakespeare's As You Like It are to The Norton Shakespeare, based on the Oxford edition, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt (gen. ed.) (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), pp. 1591–1657.

2. Here I draw upon Paul Makeham's useful distinction between ‘land’ and ‘landscape’: ‘“[L]andscape” is not a naturally occurring empirical reality. Rather, it is a human construction, a discursive formation related to – but distinct from – the “land”, which exists as an a priori entity, independent of human systems.’ See Paul Makeham, ‘Framing the Landscape: Prichard's Pioneers and Esson's The Drovers’, Australasian Drama Studies, 23 (October 1993), 121–34 (p. 121).

3. Ibid, p. 121.

5. Robert N. Watson, ‘As You Liken It: Simile in the Wilderness’, Shakespeare Survey, 56 (2003), 79–92 (passim).

6. For a discussion of why white Australia ‘embraced the legal fiction’ that terra nullius was the pretext for dispossession of Australia's indigenous population, see Andrew Fitzmaurice, ‘The Genealogy of Terra Nullius’, Australian Historical Studies, 38 (April 2007), 1–15 (p. 1).

7. For a lucid and succinct account of Mabo, see Peter E. Butt and Robert Eagleson, Mabo: What the High Court Said and What the Government Did, 2nd edn (Sydney: The Federation Press, 1996). See also Michael Bachelard, The Great Land Grab (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1997), p. 8.

8. Sharman, quoted by Maria Prerauer, ‘Dream Becomes a Reality’, in The Australian, 5 May 1982.

9. Alan Kennedy, ‘The Bard on Skates’, Sun, 26 January 1971.

10. H. G. Kippax, ‘Bubble and Squeak’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1971.

11. Ibid.

12. Kathryn Flaherty interview with Aubrey Mellor, August 2003.

13. Robert Page, ‘Stature to the Pleasurable’, Theatre Australia, 3 (September 1978), 24–25 (p. 25).

14. Jean Sinclair, ‘Play in an Ideal Setting’, Telegraph, 2 October 1981.

15. Kathryn Flaherty interview with Robert Alexander, 30 August 2004.

16. H. G. Kippax, ‘As You Like It Reveals New Outback Romance’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 1983.

17. Brian Hoad, ‘Wallowing in Hindsight’, The Bulletin, 9 August 1983.

18. Kippax, ‘As You Like It’.

19. Joanne Tompkins, Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 33.

20. Other laudatory comments included: ‘stunning designs’ (Stewart Hawkins, ‘Like It? You'll Love It’, Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1996); ‘magnificent scenic design’ (Peter Morrison, Australian Jewish News, 2 February 1996); ‘the double revolve works very well, allowing for a smooth flow of action between different parts of Shakespeare's Forest of Arden’ (James Waites, ‘Language Loses an Unusual Cast’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1996).

21. John McCallum, ‘Postmodern Bard Matched by Brilliant Performers’, The Australian, 23 January 1996.

22. Examples of this kind of commentary upon As You Like It include: ‘[Sharman] has presented the play in a manner The Bard would have – with life and vigour’ (Alan Kennedy, ‘The Bard on Skates’, Sun, 26 January 1971); and ‘Four hundred years on, if the Bard were to see this interpretation of As you Like It, surely he would shake Simon Phillips by the hand.’ (Carrie Kablean, ‘No Holds Bard’, Sunday Telegraph, 28 January 1996).

23. John McCallum, ‘Postmodern Bard’.

24. Brian Hoad, ‘As You Might Expect It,’The Bulletin, 13 February 1996.

25. Anon., Newcastle Herald, 1 February 1996.

26. For a fuller explanation of the origins of the methektic model of space, its relationship to Australian landscapes, and its operation in theatre, see Tompkins, Unsettling Space, pp. 10–13.

27. How to Do Things with Words is the title of J. L. Austin's seminal work which treats illocutionary speech or speech which ‘does things’. Austin excludes dramatic performance from this category as ‘peculiarly hollow’ because of its citational character. However, taking into account the critical legacy that has succeeded Austin's work, W. B. Worthen has recently argued that theatrical performance might in fact be seen as definitive of performativity in the sense that all utterance, whether on stage or in ‘real-life’, depends, for force and meaning, upon recognised regimes of behaviour and situation. See W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 4–9.

28. Kathryn Flaherty interview with Simon Phillips, 14 September 2004.

30. Joyce Morgan interview with Neil Armfield, ‘Where There's a Will …’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 1999.

29. Julietta Jameson, ‘Good Time with the Bard in our Backyard’, Daily Telegraph, 28 May 1999.

31. Jane Hampson interview with Deborah Mailman, ‘As You Love It’, Sun Herald, 2 May 1999.

34. Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-cultural Transactions in Australia (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 136.

32. Ben Holgate interview with Deborah Mailman, ‘Actors Hurdle the Colour Bar’, The Australian, 21 May 1999.

33. Joyce Morgan interview with Neil Armfield, ‘Where There's a Will …’

35. Ben Holgate interview with Neil Armfield, ‘Actors Hurdle the Colour Bar’.