Retired - Not Out: As You Like It - Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

To Stratford to see a new all-male production of "As You Like It" starring Jonathan Groff (I had to look him up...).

But first - dinner, and a return vsit to The Vintner. Lamb shank for Amanda:

and no prizes for guessing what mine was (though I have reduced significantly my intake over recent months):

Followed by apple and blackberry crumble:

and chocolate ice cream:

Out and a stroll to the theatre - which was HEAVING. With performances in both the Swan and the main theatre, and with the "Groff effect" swelling the numbers in the latter, all available seats in the downstairs waiting areas were occupied, so we made our way up to the mezzanine with its view down to the shop:

A very minimal stage to begin with:

Two happy old codgers:

The much more interesting to look at (and very effective) scene after the interval:

And so to the play. The acting, staging, lighting and music were all up to the highest RSC standards. There was an interruption of 10-15 minutes during the second half to deal with a medical emergency when someone to our left in the First Gallery collapsed. There followed a genuine first for me - someone did literally shout "Is there a doctor in the house?". I figured that a PhD in Quantum Mechanics was not the kind of assistance they sought, so wisely kept quiet and a few minutes later the patient was able to shuffle out under his own steam.

Throughout the whole performance the audience were clearly in seventh heaven - I don't recall seeing that many spontaneous ovations in any other production. I also don't recall ever seeing such an enormous bias in the gender of the audience - in one section of the stalls alone I counted four men and thirty women.

The reviews (listed below) were almost all equally adulatory.

And I hated the production with every fibre of my being.

According to the pre-publicity, this version of the play was supposed to challenge traditional ideas about gender, identity, and performance. For me it did none of those things.

The role of the director should surely be to serve the play; in this case I really felt that the play came a poor second to the director's own thoughts on sexuality and nationality - in addition to the all-male casting, the Forest of Arden was transformed into a Welsh hillside and the cast regularly broke into Welsh song arrangements. Why?

At a time when funding for the arts in general is under pressure (when isn't it?), was having 41-year-old Groff playing 20-year-old Rosalind genuinely an artistic experiment, a directorial indulgence, or simply a very effective way of putting bums on seats? Shakespeare already offers women fewer opportunities than men; I found it perverse that the RSC should choose to reduce them still further in the name of challenging traditional ideas about gender. In the entire canon, Rosalind is the female role with the most lines, and all evening I kept thinking about the female actors denied the opportunity to play her to accommodate this version.

“But wait!", I hear people crying, "men played women in Shakespeare’s time!”. True - and audiences also enjoyed bear-baiting, public executions and cock-fighting, as well as emptying their chamber pots into the streets. The fact that something was customary in Shakespeare's time is not, in and of itself, an argument for reviving it on a modern stage. We've moved on from those other practices - and I wish this production had given me a convincing reason to reconsider this one.

So - a strong "nul points" from me.

And Amanda's verdict on my verdict? "You're too straight and too literal". Twas ever thus.