(2006) Oh dear, it's Shakespeare, musician and magician with words! On a stage half a world away (inside this "wide universal theatre") in a British enclave (a treaty port forming a private, mini-empire) during the late 19th century in Japan, a geisha girl dances before Duke Frederick (Brian Blessed) strikes and then banishes his older brother (Brian Blessed), the rightful duke, to the Forest of Arden.

Pledging absolute fealty to her redheaded cousin Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard), the detained daughter of the exiled duke, Celia (Romola Garai), Duke Frederick's daughter, is loyal company for her distraught companion. Following a contest in which Orlando De Boys (David Oyelowo) defeats Charles, Frederick's Japanese sumo wrestler, Rosalind, immensely impressed ("Very excellent, young man!") with the black man's prowess, behind a fan first makes his acquaintance, saying that he has "overthrown more than your enemies."

With his accomplishment attracting the duke's ire and having a father who'd been another foe of Frederick and in order to evade the plots of his jealous older brother Oliver (Adrian Lester) - "I will no further offend you than becomes me for my good. ... for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle" - whom Frederick will order to search out the younger sibling - Orlando flees into the forest.

Incurring her uncle's irrational wrath, Rosalind, too, must away with Celia and the motley fool Touchstone (Alfred Molina). Disguising herself as a lad, Rosalind, calling herself Ganymede, while Celia pretends to be his sister Aliena, she discovers poems praising Rosalind hanging from trees.

In a camp the old duke tells his followers that in these primitive environs they will find, unlike the falseness of the court, honesty and wisdom from adversity: "Sweet are the uses of adversity, / Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; / And this our life exempt from public haunt, / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. / I would not change it."

The melancholy philosopher Jaques (Kevin Kline) - who upon encountering Touchstone declares "Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of" - expostulates to the old duke: "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players: / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts ... Last scene of all, / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Up to this point the play shows the tragic mien of its two-faced mask. "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," sings Amiens (Patrick Doyle, composer of the original score) in director Kenneth Branagh's Asian-flavored adaptation of the Bard's pastoral comedy with a mixture of cultures and racial roles.

Rosalind as Ganymede again encounters the lovelorn Orlando, whom she cunningly counsels to cure him of his heartache by his having to pretend to woo herself. Into the woods arrives Oliver, whom Orlando recues from fatality, himself taking on an attacking lion (but such a wild beast in Japan?), resulting in their reconciliation.

There's much wooing and spooning between Touchstone and Audrey (Janet McTeer), an honest and lusty but foul-looking woman with her goats; between black Oliver and blonde Celia; and between the lovesick shepherd Silvius (Alex Wyndham) and Phoebe (Jade Jefferies), who mistakenly falls for Ganymede, who fends off the simple girl ("so I am for no woman") by recommending the shepherd: "Sell when you can / You're not for all markets."

But all's well that ends well in the feast of Hymen with Orlando and Rosalind ("can one desire too much of a good thing?") and the other three couples, correctly matched, reunited before the banished duke, who's restored to his rightful office while it's off to a monastery for Frederick. However, Jaques (whom I take to be Shakespeare's alter ego), having observed this "humorous sadness," turns his back on the rustic revelry and wedding rituals to commune with Frederick: "To him will I: out of these convertites / There is much matter to be heard and learn'd."

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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