Shakespeare Dice: As You Like It, by Dacha Theatre
Bandages on my legs and my arms from you
Bandages, bandages, bandages
Up and down on my legs and my arms from you
Bandages, bandages, bandages
- Hot Hot Heat
Shakespeare Dice: As You Like It is a feat of theatrical storytelling that just might propel Dacha Theatre Company to international acclaim. The troupe has wrapped Seattle-area previews and are on their way (perhaps even as I type this) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
It’s the same comedy we’ve known for 400 years: cousins Rosalind and Celia flee to the forest to escape dueling dukes and brawling brothers, and in this hopeless place manage not only to find love but to spread some as well, resulting in reconciliation and a round of weddings.
In Dacha’s telling, the show starts, as many risky things do, with a roll of the dice. The idea is, the entire cast memorizes the entire play. Then, at the top of each performance, an audience member is invited to roll the dice (actually a single “die,” for you sticklers) to decide which actors play which parts. There are six actors and 13 parts, so there is doubling and tripling.
The randomization does not end with the nightly casting. Dacha noticed something. For acts two, three, and four, the scenes within each could happen in almost any order without sacrificing the legibility of the plot. So, they did it.
As one scene ends, an actor pushes a button, you see a graphic projected onto one of several screens around the space that determines what scene comes next. Upon announcement, the actors scramble to get their hands on the proper props and to throw on the correct costumes, sometimes even beginning their lines as Touchstone, say, while still wearing half of Oliver’s costume in order not to lose the pace.
But what does it add up to? Why risk pushing the actors and the script almost to the breaking point? It seems harrowing. At least one of the actors in a previous “diced” show has confirmed that indeed, it is! What if these feats fail me? you might ask.
My answer is: suffering is the theme that ties it all together – the plot and the production.
I hit on this idea through the song quoted at the top of this piece, Bandages, by Canadian dance-punk rockers Hot Hot Heat, which I had heard on the radio yesterday before the show and have been listening to all day today. I take it to be about suffering for (and from) love.
“Bandages on my legs and my arms from you,” literally (almost) happens in the play. After Orlando fights the lion, saving his brother Orlando, he is gravely (if comically temporarily) wounded. It pays off with the brothers' reconciliation. This same suffering by Orlando, along with enduring Ganymede/Rosalind's harsh lectures results in winning her heart.
These lines from act five assert that love is worth suffering the ultimate price.
PHEBE: That will I, should I die the hour after.
ROSALIND: You say, that you'll have Phebe, if she will?
SILVIUS: Though to have her and death were both one thing.
In the end, Phebe and Silvius win their wagers without having to die for them, though they did say they were willing, and it would be worth it.
So, to have the actors memorize all the roles, to tear the play apart each night and put it back together may impose a measure of suffering, but based on the results in this show and in previous “diced” shows, it provides so much. It’s a feat, but it seems more than a mere feat like rattling off the state capitals, or reciting the alphabet backwards, or performing The Mousetrap in perfect regional accents for an American audience that won’t clock the difference.
I imagine, as an actor, you come to know the story and the characters more deeply and more completely than you would were you playing only one character.
Not knowing who you are going to be and what scene might come next would seem to keep the interaction and reaction fresh and spontaneous.
It must invite ongoing discovery, like last night. Ben Symons played Duke Frederick. Kate Drummond played Celia, his daughter. Celia reveals she plans to go to the forest with Rosalind, whom Frederick has just banished. He warns her not to, saying this line,
“Firm and irrevocable is my doom.”
Pretty scary, right? You’d maybe bet he would say that like thundering Zeus. Wrong. He says it like baby talk, a dad cooing playfully to a child. Did this have to do with Ben being a father of a young child? Was it a product of the moment of interaction between Ben and Kate?
Has that line ever been said in that manner before in the run of this show? Would it ever happen that way again? Maybe. Who knows. Is it the most surprising, delightful and satisfying delivery of a line of Shakespeare that I can remember hearing? Yes, it is!
Dacha Theater has been playing dice with Shakespeare for ten years. This is their seventh such effort, having done Twelfth Night (twice), Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Midsummer, and As You Like It once before. And they diced Pride and Prejudice, for a total of eight randomized shows.
They have honed the formula and now they are taking it across the waves. It appears they have judged they are ready to go international. I think they are. If you are lucky enough to find yourself in Edinburgh, I recommend checking it out.
Shakespeare Dice: As You Like It will be performed in Venue 13 https://www.venue13.com/ at the Edinburgh Fringe https://www.edfringe.com/ August 7 through August 23.
More show information on the Dacha website:
https://www.dachatheatre.com/dice.html
Bandages, by Hot Hot Heat video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_K36y-iLUk
Pictured: two of Orlando’s love poems and my scorecard lineup from the July 31, 2026 show.
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