Billed as As You Like It: A Radical Retelling, on paper, at least, Cliff Cardinal’s Edinburgh International Festival debut sounds like a deliberate exercise in ripping up the theatrical rulebook when it comes to Shakespeare. Whether anyone actually does like what Cardinal brings to his performance remains to be seen, but they should probably leave all expectations at the door.

‘Cliff is a very unique, important Canadian artist,’ says Chris Abraham, artistic director of Toronto-based Crow’s Theatre, who commissioned Cardinal’s new work. ‘When we came out of the pandemic in Canada, it was really important for us, after a period of cultural reckoning that was a global cultural reckoning in the theatre, to think about the practices that we use in making theatre; our relationship to audiences and the habits, traditions and expectations of our audience.’

Cardinal’s commission chimed with reports of what appeared to be mass unmarked graves in church-run residential schools for indigenous children. As an indigenous artist who had already explored how First Nation communities can be marginalised in his solo work Huff, this was of obvious interest to Cardinal.

‘We began a discussion about how theatre might think about that moment,’ Abraham recalls, ‘and at the time I happened to be directing a production of As You Like It, which is a play I’ve done several times. So my conversation with Cliff led to this commission for a new play and this kind of radical adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.’ While As You Like It is regarded as one of Shakespeare’s frothiest kiss-chase comedies, Abraham points to the play’s darker side. ‘As You Like It looks at transformation in the context of a group of people that move into the forest together in a moment of crisis and emerge radically changed. And that became Cliff’s departure point in terms of how he was going to examine the piece.’

Cardinal has long been an expectation-confounding provocateur, ever since his early work, Stitch (2011), first brought him to public attention. Cardinal brought Huff to the Fringe in 2018, a fearless and impassioned piece that formed part of Summerhall’s CanadaHub strand. With As You Like It: A Radical Retelling, he’s already made waves not only on home turf in Canada, but in Sydney and London too.

‘I’ve known Cliff since he was a young playwright at the National Theatre School Of Canada,’ Abraham says of Cardinal’s credentials. ‘Cliff is a singular artist, and performs work that springs directly from his lived experience. He’s really a kind of inconvenient voice in the indigenous conversation in Canadian theatre, and he has been since he wrote Huff. What’s powerful about him as an artist is that he’s honest and candid about his anger; and what makes him provocative, challenging and important is that he does not know how to lie or to diminish or disguise that anger. What I admire about him is that he brings trouble to the conversation, and that trouble is good.’

As You Like It: A Radical Retelling, Church Hill Theatre, Wednesday 20–Saturday 23 August, 8pm.