Phil W. Bayles

Or: How I Learned That All Shakespeare Should Be In The Park

Last night, Rachel and I took advantage of a rare child-free evening (thanks, Grandma and Grandad!) to take in a play. Specifically, we went to Heeley People’s Park in Sheffield to see a delightful outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, put on by a troupe called The Handlebards.

In case that wonderful pun didn’t make it clear, The Handlebards are not just Shakespearean actors, but also cyclists. In an effort to be as environmentally friendly as possible, they’re currently cycling the length of the country (more than 1,400 miles so far) to get from venue to venue. Everything they need — their costumes, their props, their sets — gets strapped to their saddlebags between gigs and taken on the road with them. It’s a little bit like Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven, except in a world where not quite as many people died from a global pandemic.

I’d never seen As You Like It before. I hadn’t even realised that it was the play that the famous “all the world’s a stage” soliloquy comes from. But as I watched the four supremely talented actors playing multiple roles, performing their own instruments and even providing sound effects for each other, I couldn’t help but think that this was the perfect way to be introduced to a Shakespeare play for the first time.

If someone was able to go back in time, kidnap William Shakespeare and bring him to the RSC in Stratford-Upon-Avon to see one of his plays, I suspect his first question would be: “Why is everyone being so quiet?” Theatre in Elizabethan times was far more fluid than we’re used to. Etiquette wasn’t really a thing: audience members would mill around talking to each other, shouting to the actors, even throwing food at them if they got really ornery. I suspect ol’ Bill would have been much more at home in the park with us, watching actors wander into the audience to steal our picnic food and picking on one poor sod to become a stag, a sheep and a lioness at various points (shout out to Toby from Jordanthorpe, who was a real sport and ended up being one of the highlights of the show).

Shakespeare’s work has been a staple of the UK school curriculum for decades, and the question of how to make it accessible to young people is only getting more relevant. The Handlebars have found an answer, by taking that infamous soliloquy literally, and making the whole world their stage.