As You Like It

By William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival, July 11, 2007

The Great River Shakespeare Festival populates the three worlds of Shakespeare’s As You Like It with numerous memorable characters including a wrestler, a clown, two pairs of feuding brothers, a lord who refuses to be happy, and lovers almost too numerous to count. Shakespearian comedies often move between urban and rural settings, and this holds true with As You Like It. But while the text identifies only two locations, the court and the forest, this production correctly identifies the rural as two distinct locations: the deep forest and the edge of the forest. Each of these three worlds have their own feel, their own rules, and special characters who seem to thrive there.

Chris Mixon plays Duke Frederick’s thuggish and arrogant wrestler, standing as a representative of the world of Duke Frederick’s court. (Frederick, played by Christopher Gerson, and Oliver, David Graham Jones, also represent the court well, but Mixon’s Charles is truly remarkable.) With Frederick’s purse to lure challengers, Charles takes on all comers, promising dismemberment or death to those who try their luck. Mixon’s performance, perhaps modeled after a World Wrestling Federation bad guy, is simply a lot of fun, and the match with the young Orlando (Andrew Carlson) is both humorous and dramatic. It’s a fine work of fight choreography, superbly executed. The world where a trained fighter dismembers the desperate peasants for entertainment is the world of Duke Frederick’s court, an unnatural world where brother has turned against brother, and fear and repression reign.

The second world of As You Like It, the forest of Arden, is populated by Frederick’s brother, the usurped Duke Senior and his supporters. Despite claims by Charles that these men live “like the old Robin Hood of England,” they are presented as living sparse and rustic, more melancholy than merry.

Much of the melancholy comes from Jonathan Gillard Daly who plays Jaques, a man who refuses to be happy. Jaques has many of the play’s most memorable lines, including the famous, “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.” Jaques concludes this famous speech with seven despairing descriptions of successive stages of life, starting with, “the infant / Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.” Gillard Daly plays the part with the same fierceness and conceit of his superb portrayal of Malvolio in last year’s Twelfth Night but without the arrogance or ambition. While the play doesn’t tell how Jaques came to his state of melancholy, Jaques observations capture the reality of the “merry” life in the forest and provide a balance to the sugary sweet final scene.

Rosalind and Celia create a distinctly more happy world on the edges of the forest. They have run away from the court to live with Rosalind’s father, Duke Senior. But before they find the Duke, they ask for shelter at a sheep farm. They like the farm so much that they buy it. In this world, love is the major concern, and a woman dressed as a man controls the action.

Rosalind, delightfully played by Carla Noack, originally disguises herself as a man for safety. But once safely arrived in this midway rural setting, and with no real need to continue the disguise, she and Celia do not pursue the search for Duke Senior. Instead, Celia seems to be learning how to run a sheep farm, and Rosalind, dressed as a man, conducts the multiple love plots that seem to be the business of this pastoral, including her own. It is not too far fetched to believe that Rosalind stays in this world between court and exiled court because she experiences a freedom and a power that she has never had in the court—a freedom and power that she is likely to lose once she puts on her woman’s clothes and weds. Noack’s is top shepard of this truly pastoral realm.

Daniel Kallman has composed several wonderful songs utilizing lyrics included in Shakespeare’s text. The first songs are sung by Doug Scholz-Carlson as Amiens, a lord in Duke Senior’s stark camp. Later he sings a rousing duet with Kern McFadden as Touchstone, which will be taken up by the whole cast for the final weddings. Music clearly was part of Shakespeare’s productions, yet the music is not preserved. Bringing this music back into the plays continues to be an important contribution from this company.

Shakespeare doesn’t provide a lot of plot or character development in As You Like It. He does provide words: love poetry that is moving and love poetry that is laughable; melancholy reflections on the state of humans and exclamations on the possibilities of love; wise words to defend foolish ideas, and foolish words to defend wise ideas. The cast of this production of As You Like It clearly likes all these words, and they do a remarkable job of making sure that the audience understands and enjoys them, too.

See also, Minnesota Theatre's As You Like It Primer

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules: Great River Shakespeare Festival