Review: AS YOU LIKE IT at Fair Assembly

If you’re only going to produce one show a year, as, to date, Fair Assembly does, you’d best make the most of it.  And once again, they’ve done exactly that, putting together a production that deserves a larger audience than the upstairs studio theater at The Wyly Theater can provide.

First, I must make two admissions: I’m friendly with some members of the cast and crew, and As You Like It is one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays.  However, a couple of hours of Shakespeare at his not-so-best can still be much better than many of the best works of so many others, especially when performed (mostly by SMU alumni) with the skill, verve, and palpable sense of joy Fair Assembly is offering.

Rosalind (Betsy Roth) and Celia (Emily Ernst) are first cousins: the former is the daughter of the deposed Duke, the latter the daughter of the current Duke (both played by Dennis Raveneau).  When the “new” Duke decides to banish his niece, his daughter chooses to flee with her to the deposed Duke’s camp in the Forest of Arden (Rosalind, because of her unusual height, disguised as a boy, Ganymede; Celia as Ganymede’s sister, Aliena – pseudonyms that meant much more to the Elizabethan audience than they mean to us), accompanied by the court’s fool, Touchstone (Austin Tindle in week one, Danny Lovelle in the second week) – because as everyone knows, when two young women travel out of civilization (a theme of the play), one should always dress and a boy, while bringing along a jester.

In the Forest of Arden (often referred to as a desert in the text – the meanings of words change over time), they’re reunited with Rosalind’s love-at first-sight fellow, Orlando (Mac Welch), who, along with his elderly servant, Adam (David Helms), has fled from his dastardly brother, Oliver (Adam Elliott), after defeating the Duke’s champion wrestler (Jon Garrard).  Of course, Orlando doesn’t recognize Rosalind, who is a dressed as a boy (that her face and hair haven’t changed doesn’t seem to matter – at least Clark Kent had the decency to put on glasses).  Instead, Orlando is somehow convinced to behave as if Ganymede is Rosalind (which she is), and thus to woo.  In this production, I believe he begins to see through the disguise. 

Within the forest, there are also two distinct groups that everyone interacts with: the exiled court and the rustics.  The court, run by the old Duke, revels in their freedom, enjoying the lack of responsibility, the pleasures of hunting and singing.  They are joined by the melancholic Jacques (Meagan Harris), who offers one of the most well-known soliloquies in theater (All the world’s a stage), and only becomes animated when telling of his conversation with Touchstone.  On the other side are the idealized peasantry: Corin (David Helms, again), the old shepherd who matches wits with the fool; Silvius (Jon Garrard’s second role), a young shepherd absolutely enamored of Phoebe (Cheryl Lowber), who is uninterested in him from the start, but becomes even less so after meeting Ganymede, with whom she falls instantly in love.  There’s also the simple farmgirl that Touchstone pursues, Audrey (Caitlin Chapa), who is loved by William (Logan Hallwas, in one of his three roles: he also plays Le Beau, a courtier who was kind to both the young ladies and Orlando, back in the new Duke’s court, and Amiens, the only member of the old Duke’s exiled court to actually be given a name).  They were joined at the end by goddess Hymen (young Nadine DeBerardinis), bedecked in flowers.

There’s a lot of music in As You Like It – some might even suggest that it’s actually something like a musical, except that the songs don’t advance the plot in any meaningful way – and Fair Assembly really plays that up.  Hallwas spends much of his time strumming his guitar, although both Harris and Raveneau play at various times, while Lowber and Garrard, as members of the exiled court, harmonize and provide percussion.  Traditionally, Amiens sings, but the main song is instead sung sweetly by Chapa, while Hallwas (either by design or nature) butchers the song he does sing.  Harris, accompanying herself on guitar, suggests that she may have a future as a folk singer, as well as an actress, should she so choose it.  Ivan Dillard wrote the music (and played in some performances).

Performed in the round (a curved rectangle, actually), with no set and very few props (some mismatched luggage, a blanket, a pillow), I recommend sitting on the long sides.  The sparseness contrasts nicely with the elaborate costumes designed by Steven Smith, which seem to fall into three categories: the court (formal attire), the exiled court (a more relaxed style with plaids and stripes), and the peasants (which seems to be mostly for laughs).  I don’t really understand the themes of the groupings, but they mostly worked (although I was a bit thrown by the replacement of Touchstone’s motley with what I think is a tutu).  Orlando, oddly, remained old school prep the whole way, including during his wrestling match.  Joshua Manning’s lighting design varied the pitch and the mood throughout.

Fair Assembly is very focused on movement as a key element of acting, but with a few exceptions, it was natural enough that one couldn’t really feel the hand of movement director, Sara Romersberger, which is what you want.  This is critical here, since as I said, the performers are surrounded by the audience.

Director Elizabeth Lovelady has helped this talented cast perform well.  Raveneau is two completely different people as the two Dukes, not just in his voice but in his carriage and mannerisms.  Even without the alternating jackets, the audience would have no difficulty determining which Duke was which.  Roth and Ernst play off of each other so easily, particularly in their moments of frenzy.  Lowber is a cat-in-heat when she meets Ganymede, while Roth is appropriately contemptuous towards her.  I disliked the decision to have Harris play Jacques as a heavy drinker, instead of simply melancholy.  Harris was at her best in the scenes where she wasn’t imbibing, allowing the naturalist to be layered, instead of just another depressed drunk.

The themes of As You Like It – romantic naturalism, love at first sight – are insipid; the plot has holes wide enough for a multitude of Falstaffs, marching shoulder-to-shoulder, to pass through; Rosalind’s duplicitous and callous treatment of Orlando is as baffling (is she testing him or grooming him?) as it is disturbing; and there are two minor characters who have the same first names as other characters, so more than usual, the success of the play falls completely on the actors.  Happily, this cast more than succeeds.  

As You Like It runs Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2:00 PM through August 13 at the Wyly Theatre in Dallas.

Photo credit: Ben Torres

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