At one point in As You Like It, Rosalind, the female lead, while dressed as a boy, pretends to be a girl as she gives Orlando, the male lead, a workshop in courtship. In Shakespeare’s time, Rosalind would have been played by a boy, so you would have a boy portraying a girl disguised as a boy pretending to be a girl. This sort of ambiguity ought to be irresistable to a certain class of otaku, and I’m surprised that there hasn’t been an As You Like It anime yet.
All the girls were acted by females in the “Shakespeare in the Park” production of As You Like It I saw Sunday evening, as were many of the guys — the latter not very convincingly. It might have worked better if most hadn’t been so chubby and if they had been able to project their voices better.
This sort of ambiguity ought to be irresistable to a certain class of otaku, and I’m surprised that there hasn’t been an As You Like It anime yet.
They’ve come close; in Chapter 41 of the K-On! manga, the girls’ class did a production of Romeo and Juliet, but instead of doing auditions, they allocated the roles by popular vote. Ritsu was voted in as Juliet, and Mio was voted in as Romeo–and as the saying goes, hilarity ensued.
(Of course, you have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.)
Oh, the not being able to project thing. I like going to plays put on by students on campus but sadly some just have NOT learned how to project yet, and they are hard to hear. Sadly, one of the main characters in a recent Shakespeare play suffered from this affliction.