The George Washington Foundation and the Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble are putting on William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Will you like it? Our Theatre Critic says, “Yes!”
Shakespeare on the Lawn at Kenmore: As You Like It
June 15 and 16 at 6:30 PM, with the gate opening at 5:30 to allow the audience to picnic.
Tickets
Bring a chair or blanket and your sense of humor!
Rosalind has a problem: she’s an ex-duchess in waiting. She lost her place when her mom, Duchess Senior, lost her throne to an unidentified duchy. Apparently if you’re a powerful ruler in such a place, your brother is likely to be your worst enemy.
Set in the 1980’s this production of William Shakespeare’s timeless comedy “As You Like It” presents us with the Duchess Senior, played by director Adrienne Daly, who was banished from her Duchy Brooklyn to The Forest of Arden Prospect Park. She has nothing to do but wander around, enjoy nature, share pizza with her former courtiers, and make fun of the character types around her. In Elizabethan England the 1980’s you also listen to and lip sync rap, and sometimes stage a rap battle.
That may seem wrong, but no one was supposed to take this play seriously in Elizabethan England, either. Just think about the title.
Plot, Twist, Joke, Repeat
Rosalind finds herself at the mercy of an Uncle Frederick who has no mercy. New Duke Frederick decides that a new cute guy (Orlando) has to die, and orders Charles the wrestler (who apparently has a license to kill as well as a killer sparkly mask) to do the deed in a wrestling match. Rosalind cheers for Orlando, who wins the match against all odds.
Rosalind is banished like her mother. She also ends up in Prospect Park. Her very religious cousin Celia gets fed up with her dad Fred and decides to go with Rosalind to the Park. Since girls are frequently in danger in Prospect Park, Rosalind decides that she’s going to have to disguise herself as a guy named Ganymede, and therefore be able to protect both the cousins. Celia is an alien in her own home and so takes on the name Aliena.
Oh, yeah, and New Cute Guy Orlando has his life threatened by his older brother Oliver because of the baleful influence of Duke Frederick. Orlando has met and fallen madly in love with Rosalind (who has not yet become Ganymede) and she equally dotes on him. Orlando, who normally talks in unrhymed iambic pentameter, is too tongue-tied to talk with Rosalind. He can only make roughly human noises but she just sees all the potential there. So now all the good guys are headed to Prospect Park, leaving the bad guys in the Big Bad City.
What follows is an ever more complex set of chance meetings, reunions, fallings in love, not fallings in love, and other comic interactions that get more and more complicated until all of the disguises and disagreements get so complicated they can’t get any more tangled.
Shakespeare was a vast borrower of plots from various romantic Italian stories, and manages to pack most of them into one play.
Through all of the hijinks Jacques the melancholic, a follower of Duchess Senior, plays straight man for the jokes; that is until he meets Touchstone, the clown, and discovers his new calling. If he becomes a jester, he can say whatever unpleasant thing he wants — as long as he turns it into a joke.
And those are just the main plots. There are entire great plays based on premises that Shakespeare uses for one laugh in one scene. The joy of As You Like It is that it’s a true farce. That word is from French, which originally meant “stuffing.” A farce has one joke stuffed in after another one.
Oh, and almost everyone falls in love with someone. And there are shepherds and a goatherd, just to let you know that Prospect Park is truly a rural paradise.
Technically Speaking
The play is well cut with scenes missing — not that a modern audience will actually miss them. Shakespeare originally included a lot of jokes having to do with dumb and ineffective clergy, those wacky melancholy people who are sad because a deer was hunted, and the oddity that a woman might be attracted to another woman based on how she’s dressed.
Thankfully, this production leaves out a lot of them. True to performances from Shakespeare’s time, though, audience contact and frequent ad libs are included. Woe to any audience member who lets the cast members see they’ve brought a jar of pretzels. (Don’t worry, the audience member got the pretzels back at curtain call.)
The play takes place in and among the audience, on a very bare formal stage that somehow makes a major change using a forest backdrop, but mostly on the ground in front of the stage. True to the original period it isn’t cluttered with sets.
The character’s interactions and lines provide us with a suggestion as to where we are, and off we go into the scenes. When Orlando writes poems and sticks them to tree trunks he uses the real surrounding trees.
Costuming is suggestive of 80’s pop culture. Printed t-shirts, more- or less-formal attire, extreme street makeup, jewelry, and other indicators let you know class and type.
Lighting is very effective (the sun).
The updated staging helps when the ambient sound of Fredericksburg invades Prospect Park instead of The Forest of Arden. If the denizens of Arden were to hear wind, birds, and insects they wouldn’t be alarmed, but if they had to ignore helicopters, motorcycles, and distant jets it would stretch the audience sense of reality.
Now what would any of them do when the rumble of wind on microphones mimicked thunder so much that we audience members found ourselves checking the skies when it happened? The microphones, though, are welcome. Just about all of Shakespeare’s language comes through loud and clear.
Believable Actors?
Are the characters believable? Well, are Elmer Fudd, SpongeBob, or Gilligan believable? Not really, but they strike us so powerfully because we sense an inner truth to them, and because they’re played so fully we accept them.
Corinn Fulton as Rosalind carries her role off well, and strange to say I think her Ganymede character is the more compelling because we get to know her better.
Rosalind is cute but Ganymede is faced with consequences that force her to do the best for others as well as herself. She’s a true princess and not just a victim of Brooklyn politics.
Sam Fulton’s Orlando carries a casual energy and a high level of vocal strength. His performance is at its best when the character is clueless, especially when he reacts with Rosalind.
Evil Duke Frederick (Trip Lloyd) has to share a body with Corin the Shepherd, and Lloyd manages to create two separate and completely opposite roles. Frederick made me think of Al Pacino in Scarface, Corin has a strong, direct honesty. Each role embodied the spirit of his environment: Frederick embodied the evils of urban life and Corin the virtues of country living.
Damian Leone played both Charles the Wrestler and melancholy Jacques. Both roles showed an easy energy, but Jacques was a continual surprise as a new facet of his character popped out. Also, he rapped Shakespeare’s song lyrics with a vengeance. Ducdame!
A note about dialects: sometimes the Brooklyn shines through and simply adds to the entertainment. Sometimes Italian or Spanish comes popping out when you least expect it. And sometimes Standard American, and sometimes heightened Shakespeare-ese. Brooklyn is a borough of immigrants, after all.
Adrienne Daly is a model of balance and propriety as Duchess Senior, and that’s just what we need, because she’s the model that Rosalind will need to grow into as she grows. When we finally see them together we become aware of how much Rosalind has grown during her adventures.
Alexandra Tugman as Celia brings a simple honesty to her role. In a lot of Shakespeare comedies, the confidante character is a servant. Celia is now the Duchess heir apparent, and should outrank her cousin. Celia’s sweet reticence to outshine her cousin makes her admirable. Tugman expresses her near-regret at her ascension well.
Orlando’s brother Oliver (Luca Schultze) starts off hateful, and continues hateful through most of the play until he learns his lesson.
All the other couples in the play are somewhat predictable, but Oliver’s turn of heart and loss of his heart are not. Because he’s not as patently evil and unpleasant as Duke Frederick and because he doesn’t get a soliloquy, we don’t get his motivation for oppressing Orlando, so it’s a pleasant surprise when he repents.
Both courts, the Brooklyn and the Prospect Park one, have a limited number of courtiers and servants. The three who made the cut at Kenmore are LeBeau, who ends up an errand runner for Frederick; Touchstone who is a jester who loves twisted logic and wordplay, and Oliver’s servant Adam who joins Orlando in banishment, and last but not least Amiens (and her ever-present boom box), the musician who supports the mood of many scenes. All four are well-played in each of their roles by Josh Watson, Evan Keene, Scott Allan, and Carmen Todd respectively.
Finally, and not least, we come to the country lovers. Christian Gordon as Silvius is strong as an introduction to the comic aspects of love in the country. He cries for Phoebe, played by Amber Vazque with hilarious diffidence who prefers the manly Ganymede to the admittedly sad Silvius. Touchstone eventually succumbs to country love for Audrey, a goatherd who is the frequent butt of Touchstone’s sly insults. I found myself wishing Shakespeare had given her more to say, but Touchstone doesn’t give Audrey much chance. Schultze doubles as Audrey’s dumb and listless potential mate William whom Touchstone double-talks into giving up his claim to Audrey’s hand.
With such a cast, who needs an elaborate set?
Dennis Wemm is a retired professor of theatre and communication, having taught and led both departments at Glenville State College for 34 years. In his off time he was president and sometimes Executive Director of the West Virginia Theatre Conference, secretary and president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and generally enjoyed a life in theatre.
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