AS YOU LIKE IT – DIDI BERGMAN
RockKent is at The Medway Little Theatre to watch “As You Like It”. Yes, that’s right: the Shakespeare play. But this is a Shakespeare play with a difference.
Being the most densely song-packed of the Bard’s plays, director Michael Bath has called upon the services of local singer-songwriter Didi Bergman to write and perform her own compositions using the poet’s original lyrics. She’s aided and abetted by, among others, local musicians John Whittaker on hurdy-gurdy and Barry Kearns on guitar.
Music will be at the heart of this play. Even when they are not playing, the musicians often remain on stage, a reminder that their involvement forms a pivotal role in the play.
In fact, while Shakespeare plays are often edited down by directors (and this has been done to a certain extent here), Bath has chosen to add to the play with a further two songs. “She Moves Through The Fair” and “Ha-Lan-Tow” are both traditional songs previously sung by the likes of Sandy Denny, All About Eve and The Watersons.
The play hits the boards of The Medway Little Theatre just days after the owner of a local music venue has, rather prematurely, publicly declared the Medway music scene dead. This play, if nothing else, will prove him wrong. Medway’s music culture is so alive and well it’s invading other art forms.
“As You Like It” is, you may remember from school, that play where a woman dresses up as a man and then pretends to be a woman again. There’s more cross dressing in this play than a night in the company of Christopher Biggins.
The play opens with Didi and friends marching onto the stage playing a folk tune. It sets the scene perfectly for this, Shakespeare’s most pastoral of plays. Later, we will hear her play snippets of “English Country Garden” and Greig’s “Peer Gynt” on descant recorder to remind us of the play’s rural roots.
But it is in Didi Bergman’s original compositions the music truly shines. The present day setting of this “As You Like It” lets Bergman use her own contemporary folk style on the songs – and her trademark red cap.
From the gentle jauntiness of “Under the Greenwood Tree” and the triumphal joyousness of “Wedding is Great Juno’s Crown” to the bitterness of “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” and the sheer nightmarishness of “What Shall He Have That Killed The Deer” Bergman hits the mood of the moments every time.
The last of those songs could be the result of a bad trip. A very bad trip. It’s performed by the whole cast under dingy lighting, with a real sense of foreboding and fear in the music. It’s an intense, claustrophobic moment in what is otherwise a light play, but it totally absorbs the viewer.
Where the play’s original text suggests a moment of celebration at a deer‘s killing, here the song becomes part of a macabre dream sequence. Wearing “leather skin and horns” becomes a twisted punishment rather than a reward thanks to Bergman’s score. It’s a real highlight of the play. Well, a gloomy, dark highlight.
Michael Bath could have found no better musician to score Shakespeare’s words for this production than Didi Bergman. The tenderness of “Under the Greenwood Tree” and “Blow, Blow…” are as sweet and poignant as anything else from this musician’s back catalogue. Think of her songs “Dragonfly” or “Jules and Jim”.
Just as with her previous work, the influence of Sandy Denny is never far from the surface. Bergman’s music is a thing of delicacy and delight balanced with dismay. And so, when Bergman sings “this life is most jolly” the music drips with miserable irony as much as the lyrics. No wonder this musician is so beloved of the play’s melancholic Jacques.
“As You Like It” is on at the Medway Little Theatre until Friday 8 July 2011. If you miss it, there are plans to release downloads of the songs featured in the play. Shakespeare will be doing cartwheels in his grave.
