Product Details

• Directors: Stratford Festival, Desmond Heeley
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: Madacy Records
• VHS Release Date: June 2, 1998
• Run Time: 158 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630442499X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256,538 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

As You Like It (1982) - (VHS)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Falling in Love with Rosalind, December 29, 1999

By 

William English (the Florida Suncoast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: As You Like It (1982) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This rendition of the popular comedy is not a glitzy Hollywood production, and in fact much of its charm derives from the fact that it is a live stage production that was "movified" by video cameras in the theater.

Although movie creations can offer intimacy and rich scenery that is not available on stage, there are always speeches that are whispered and shouted, and some of the throw-away lines are swallowed so that it can be difficult to understand the words-which is very important to the appreciation of the philosophical richness of Shakespeare's comedies. The twin benefits I see is this Stratford Festival production are that (1) it is much easier to understand all of the words, because stage players have to speak all lines to the guy in the back row. And (2) the stage and scenery are more like the Elizabethan theaters the plays were written to be performed in. You don't need fancy scenery to enjoy a Shakespeare play; you need excellent actors and a lively imagination.

All of the important actors are extremely well-cast, but Roberta Maxwell outshines them all. She brings Rosalind to life in a fresh and captivating interpretation. Truly she "counterfeits well" in her male impersonator's role, but throughout she is feminine grace personified. I fell in love with her by the end of the second scene, as would any red-blooded male who is free to do so. Her hands are especially beautiful in her eloquent gestures.

Of course, Orlando is as charming to the ladies, but his role is almost eclipsed by the brilliant Roberta.

The words of the play are true to the text, but the barnyard humor is surprisingly overplayed for the taste of educated people; however, mature observers can discount these occurrences for the richness of the morality and the philosophical expression offered by the Shakespearean wit. He puts most of the best lines into the mouths of rustics and fools, which makes them the more notable.

This video is an excellent buy!

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sleeper., March 9, 2001

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: As You Like It (1982) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The actors could have been more closely miked, the editing could have included more close-ups, the actors' faces could have been more brightly illuminated. But this is a surprisingly effective, satisfying filming of Shakespeare's supreme comedy and heroine. The performance is first-rate and the reproduction good enough (I wasn't even aware the tape was recorded in EP mode) to capture both the letter and spirit of the play as well as the response of an "informed," appreciative audience. The presentation brings to life Shakespeare's language in a manner that encourages the spectator to complete the meanings through the work of the imagination, as opposed to the "pre-formed" meanings of a lavish Branagh cinematic event, in which language necessarily takes the role of mere accompanist.

The pastoral, philosophical nature of this play in particular makes it difficult going for many readers, especially if they haven't cut their teeth first on less demanding comedies--12th Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado. For this reason, the presence of coarse characters and vulgar sexual jokes is both a necessary dramatic device and counterbalance to the ethereal fancies of the "enchanted" lovers. But in the middle of all the extremes is Rosalind--a boy actor playing a woman who plays a man playing a woman--with insights about gender, love and marriage that take us beyond the most probing modern discussions of those subjects. As preparation for this play, the reader would be well advised to try Shakespeare's Sonnet 20, which dismisses biological differences between the sexes and affirms the power of love to at once affirm and transcend male-female difference. Was Shakespeare homosexual? Irrelevant. ( "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" weren't in Shakespeare's lexicon.) Are the poems and plays homoerotic? Yes, frequently. But more importantly they constantly force us to examine the limitations of our own assumptions and linguistic categories concerning human sexuality.

"As You Like It" is above all a story about education. To the blindesses, fevers, madness of lovers gone wrong, Rosalind serves as teacher, physician, counselor--and yet is a student as well, bringing us closer to the meanings of love even as she is discovering them for herself.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, November 16, 1999

By 

Charles D. Lipsig (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: As You Like It (1982) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I was overjoyed to find it available on videotape through amazon.com.

This is a wonderful, magical performance, from top to bottom. The late Nicholas Pennell and Rosemay Dunsmore especially stand out as Jacques and Celia -- and watch their reactions to other characters, when their characters don't have lines.

The music is outstanding. The staging, especially the dark opening, is superb. More than 15 years later, this is still a favorite that I could watch again and again.