E-Mail This Article to a Friend Family affair Sir Peter Hall on As You Like It BY CAROLYN CLAY

What with founding the Royal Shakespeare Company and leading Britain’s National Theatre for 15 years, Sir Peter Hall had never, in 50 years of directing, gotten around to As You Like It. "I’d done over 30 of Shakespeare’s plays," he says over the phone from England. "And it looked as if I didn’t want to do As You Like It. The real reason is that when I was running the Royal Shakespeare Company in the ’60s, I produced Vanessa Redgrave’s. I didn’t direct it; that was Michael Elliott. She was about 23, and she was so extraordinary. And I’ve never met anybody in the intervening years that I thought was a natural Rosalind. I think to make the play and the part work, you have to be very young; you can’t act that kind of directness and naïveté."

So who is the young actress who finally pushed aside Hall’s memory of Redgrave, enabling him to undertake the 2003 Theatre Royal Bath production of Shakespeare’s comedy that arrives in Boston this week? The director’s daughter, Rebecca Hall, who was just 21 when the production, part of a Sir Peter Hall season in Bath, opened last August to favorable reviews.

But didn’t Hall fear the assignment would put pressure on Rebecca? "She’s a very cool customer," he says. "She played an enormously long part in a British television series when she was eight." That would be The Camomile Lawn, in which Rebecca played the child incarnation of Claire Bloom. "She had a huge success, and she was inundated with offers to do movies and television. She obviously wanted to be an actress; she’s always been content to come to rehearsals, either her mother’s [the American soprano Maria Ewing] or mine. And I sat her down and said, ‘If you want to be an actress, you’ve got to have a childhood. Let’s not become a professional child actor.’

"So, both at school and at Cambridge University, she just acted all the time, and by the time she came into the profession, she’d done Helena, Hermia, Miranda, Beatrice, Lady Macbeth. She did Mrs. Warren’s Profession just over a year ago on the West End. I don’t entirely endorse an awards society — I’m always referred to as a nine-time Tony nominee, which makes me feel uncomfortable. [Actually, Hall is a two-time Tony winner, for Amadeus and The Homecoming.] But anyway, she did get the Ian Charleson Award, which is for the most brilliant young actor who’s entered the profession each year. It’s given by a jury of actors; Eileen Atkins was the chairman, and Rebecca got it, so she’s neither a beginner nor unrecognized."

Hall is not a believer in "concept" productions, so don’t look for his Forest of Arden to be set on Mars. "I’ve done about 300 plays in my life and about 50 operas. And I believe that the task of a theater or opera director is to try and find out what the man meant and then find a way of conveying that to your audience. Given that brief, you can, of course, do it in modern dress or you can do it with them all on motorbikes."

The seasons, he will allow, figure prominently in the production, "but they do in the text. The other thing that I will say is that people think of As You Like It as a funny piece with a lot of people romping around in the Forest of Arden. If you look at the play absolutely clearly, there are a lot of very dark strands in it as well, and the darknesses makes the sunshine even brighter. But like most comedies, it’s very serious. A lot of uncomfortable things, both politically and morally, are dealt with in the play. What we’re bringing you is an uncut text; I think four lines have been cut." Still, the show runs just three hours "because we play it quickly, trippingly on the tongue."

Not to mention understandably on the tongue. Hall’s productions are known for their clarity. "The key is making it communicate. When I did The Merchant of Venice on Broadway with Dustin Hoffman some years ago, in the interval of a preview there was a woman having a row with her husband behind me, very, very shrilly. And she said, ‘Of course it’s been modernized; I can understand it!’ So I was very pleased with that."

As You Like It is presented by Broadway in Boston and the Huntington Theatre Company at the Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont Street in the Theater District, November 11 through December 21. Tickets are $25 to $67; call (617) 931-2787.