“As You Like It”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2011

Fun and frisky, fresh and wise, this is a grand production! While Shakespeare & Company has definitely expanded their repertoire well beyond the Bard, this is the heart of what they do – wonderful Shakespeare done wonderfully well. All of the roles in As You Like It are fascinating and entertaining, if not down-right funny, which director Tony Simotes proves here with an amazing ensemble cast who virtually steal the show from the young and love-sick Rosalind and Orlando.

(The other day, in a distracted moment at work, I was asked to recount the plot of As You Like It and I replied: “You know, it’s the one where Rosalind is banished and dresses up as a boy, and Whats-his-name nails all the poems to the trees, and Jacques* says ‘All the world’s a stage…’” This seemed to satisfy my questioner, who noted, correctly, that it was not “Twelfth Night.” “Twelfth Night” is the one with the twins and the shipwreck. I hope this suffices to remind you, too, of which Shakespearean comedy is under discussion here.)

This is the fourth production of As You Like It that I have reviewed, and the second directed by Simotes. That 1999 production, set in 1910 New York City and was my favorite until I saw this latest rendition, set just a decade later in Paris. Simotes obviously “gets” this play. In 1999 his Summer Performance Institute production, presented in modest performance space in The Stables at The Mount, was up against a Big Bucks rendition on the MainStage of the Williamstown Theatre Festival starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosalind – and his was waaaaay better. (Paltrow was very good but the production as a whole was a disaster.)

In 2004, the last time Shakespeare & Company presented a major staging of As You Like It, director Eleanor Holdridge made the mistake of setting it as a dream play. It is not When Shakespeare wanted to write a dream play, he called it a dream play. When he wanted to write slapstick comedy – The Comedy of Errors – or farce – The Merry Wives of Windsor – he made it plain what genre he was creating. As You Like It (1599) is one of his mature comedies, and by mature I mean wise and well-rounded. There is pain and sorrow and danger in this play, as well as romantic and rustic comedy. There are young lovers, but there are older characters, rich characters, poor characters. In fact, it takes a village to present a top-notch production of As You Like It, and Shakespeare & Company not only provides the perfect cohesive community, but one that is highly trained in and dedicated to staging Shakespeare.

Most of this cast has been with the company for years, often decades – as has Simotes – and they work comfortably together and with newcomers Kelley Curran, who plays Celia, and Tony Roach, who plays Orlando. I liked Roach as well as I have liked any actor playing Orlando – one thing about seeing a play over and over again is that you come to understand when it is the character you don’t like and not the actor. Orlando is a dull boy and that is how even the most brilliant actor has to play him**

Curran brought new life to a role I had previously considered whiny and extraneous. I really LIKED Celia this time around, and understood her as the catalyst of plot. It is her love for Rosalind that takes these young women out of the constrictions of the hate-filled court and into the liberty of the love-filled forest. Rosalind could not do it on her own.

Merrit Janson is a fine Rosalind, but Simotes has really made the play about the ensemble more than the heroine. Long after Janson has faded into a vague sort of EveryRosalind in my theatre-addled brain, I will retain the delightfully dim Audrey of Jennie M. Jadow, the endlessly optimistic Silvius of Ryan Winkles, and the many bits of comic genius contributed to the proceedings by Wolfe Coleman as Oliver Martex and a member of Duke Senior’s company so rhythmically challenged that a solo on the triangle is beyond his capability (although in many other scenes Coleman handles that 1920’s favorite the ukulele and similar instruments with great skill.)

It took great pleasure in seeing my two favorite Jonathans – Jonathan Epstein and Jonathan Croy – on stage together. As Touchstone and Corin respectively, they share a brief and funny scene in Act III. In the 2004 production Epstein played the “melancholy Jacques.” Here he plays the “motley fool.” It was not until many years later that Shakespeare wrote of the “sweet and bitter fool” in King Lear (1606) but he surely created them here. Using their wit to illuminate the comic and sober sides of life, Touchstone and Jacques are peripheral to the plot, but vital to the play.

In a brilliant bit of casting, a woman, the wonderful Tod Randolph, plays Jacques. She very nearly steals the show. The character has no romantic entanglements and Arthur Oliver has dressed Randolph in a man’s suit. Is Jacques male or female, a cross dresser, transgender, asexual? What a wonderful bunch of questions to ask! And who cares what gender s/he is when Randolph plays the part so beautifully.

Otherwise gender matters very much in this play, and gender differences are much under discussion. Celia, Rosalind, and Orlando are literally prisoners of their genders and stations at the court in Act I. In the Forest of Arden they are free to explore who they are outside of those boundaries, and life is greatly improved for all of them.

At the end of the play, when – Deus Ex Machina – evil is defeated and everyone has their rightful social rank restored to them, Duke Senior wisely says “First, in this forest, let us do those ends that here were well begun and well begot…” What a wise man. If I were all those people, I would never leave the Forest of Arden. There lives peace and happiness and equality and love. Problems are solved, wrongs are righted, and true love finds a way.

Simotes has set this production in Paris circa 1920. Set designer Sandra Goldmark has created little grey replicas of Parisian landmarks – la tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, l’arc de triomphe – which actors roll about the stage to stand and sit on. Sometimes the open up the rooftops and pull out props. They were very sweet but when Act I was over and everyone took to the woods, I wanted Paris to go away. The set pieces stayed and I got used to them. The play is set in the spring, but the very early spring, indicated by the addition of pussy willow and forsythia to the chimney-tops and the still leafless trees in the forest.

Goldmark and lighting designer Les Dickert have created an evocative Forest of Arden at the back of the Founders’ Theatre stage, which is used to particularly good effect during a musical number late in the play. Alexander Sovronsky, who is the composer, sound designer and music director for this production, found a song sung by members of the French Foreign Legion (Oliver has costumed Duke Senior’s attendants in Legionnaires’ uniforms) at the funerals of fallen comrades which the male members of the cast sing from all around the theatre in real live “surround sound.” It was the one solemn musical moment in the production and it worked beautifully. Otherwise Sovronsky has used the 1920’s setting to take the music in a jazzier direction – Touchstone and Audrey sing scat on Sweet Lovers Love the Spring – and the show opens and closes with a rousing Charleston done to It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie (which wasn’t written until 1936 but dramatic license prevails.)

Because As You Like It is one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s comedies, and because there was a main stage production in Lenox as recently as 2004, I have heard some grumbling from Shakespeare & Company fans that they don’t want to waste their money seeing another production again so soon. Trust me, neither your time nor your money will be wasted and you will have the thrill of seeing this well-known and much-loved play with fresh eyes.

Click HERE for a full photo gallery for this production.

As You Like It runs from June 24 through September 4 in the Founders’ Theatre on the Shakespeare & Company campus on Kemble Street in Lenox MA. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission and is suitable for everyone in the family old enough to enjoy Shakespeare. Tickets are $15-$65, and S&Co.’s usual range of discounting options are available, including discounts for groups, students, senior citizens, and the very popular 40% Berkshire Resident Discount. Contact the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or boxoffice@shakespeare.org, or order tickets from www.shakespeare.org. The Founders’ Theatre is wheelchair accessible and hearing aid assisted.

* The name is here pronounced Jay-queez. It is never given the modern French pronunciation Zhock. In Elizabethan England the word “jakes” meant the outhouse or privy. The verse indicates the name has two syllables, and in earlier Shakespearean productions it was probably pronounced Jake-iz. It was the Victorians, who put skirts on their pianos for Lord’s sake, who exaggerated the pronunciation to Jay-queez to remove any hint of lavatory humor.

** I do wonder if I would feel that way about Orlando if I had succeeded in seeing my beloved Raul Julia in the role in Central Park lo these many decades ago. I dutifully stood in line for hours to get my ticket – and at that time Central Park was a VERY dangerous place for a lone young woman to hang out – only to have the heavens open before the first act was over. Sigh…

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