Review: AS YOU LIKE IT at Independent Shakespeare Company In Griffith Park

In Arden, the songs are on the mellow side, bluesy, sure, but nothing too somber, the kind of tones a trio with a sax, keyboard and single drum could easily trot out; the kind of tones one could bop along to at an outdoor gathering once upon a long time ago.  Director David Melville and music director Daniel DeYoung have taken the songs of the singer Al Bowlly as the inspiration for Melville's 1930s era production of AS YOU LIKE IT for the Independent Shakespeare Company and – musically speaking – his production ambles along in its sweet and comely way. Well, it doesn’t always amble. This same AS YOU LIKE IT also presents a bunch of characters who favor the position of being prostrate on the ground, whether out of melancholy, sweet ecstasy, because they’ve been bested in a wrestling match or, most often, because they are head over feet in love. The songs and the screwball are largely in synch. Melville’s Arden has plenty of space for the melancholy, the displaced and the lovelorn alike, even for a frisky French goatherd who warbles merrily as she bags goat poop.

Griffith Park has room for everyone else to play as well, albeit in a different configuration than what ISC summer free Shakespeare-goers are accustomed to. With plans underway for the company’s long-awaited permanent stage, the summer Shakespeare festival has been pushed into the glen above the location of the Old Zoo. The action is set in the round, surrounding the primary playing space with a few adjacent areas (including where people are seated). Show up an hour before the curtain, and you can tour this Arden via an interactive prologue written and directed by Nikhil Pai.

Or get there when the play starts and spend the next couple of hours drinking it all in. Melville’s 15-person cast is a mixture of ISC Shakespeare regulars and some kick-ass newcomers. The director himself contributes a couple of original songs and a deft comic turn as the caustic tongued fool, Touchstone. Among the many highlights are Jacqueline Misaye nailing the lovelorn cross-dressing Rosalind, William Elsman bringing intriguing dimension to the melancholy Jacques and especially Daisy Tichenor making a banquet out of the adorable simple goatherd, Audrey. As magnificent a character as Rosalind is and as engaging as her AS YOU company members are, this comedy can get long and tedious without a careful hand at the helm. Not here. ISC keeps the action moving and gives it joy throughout.

From the outset - indeed the first line - we see someone is missing. That would be Adam, the faithful servant of Orlando and the de Boys family who accompanies his fugitive master into the Forest of Arden and in whose interest Orlando threatens the banished Duke Senior (Pierre Adeli)  upon their first encounter. Adam is gone but not missed. Orlando (Jack Lancaster) travels alone, all the better for him to concentrate on being in love with Rosalind after he captures her heart following a wrestling match against the usurping Duke Senior’s wrestler, Charles.

A little bit more about that match…it’s a kick, staged with chair smashes and other bits of WWF-like brio. In and out of the ring, Elsman is a riot as the trash-talking wrestler Charles (AKA Two-Buck Chuck) who transforms from swaggering blowhard to well-mannered courtier whenever he lifts his mask. The match concluded, the wrestling ring at the center of scenic designer BinhAn Nguyen’s configuration gets peeled away, and the action moves into the greenery.           

This Arden seems to sweep up and captivate every character who enters it (well, OK, Touchstone puts up a fight). Having forsaken the court, Rosalind’s cousin, Celia (Bukola Ogunmola) is so immediately taken with country life that she breaks into song declaring “I’m a country girl now.” The song bookends the post-intermission opening “City Girl” which finds Tichenor’s Audrey dreaming of a different kind of life as she merrily cleans up goat poop. Any of Audrey’s urban yearnings are quickly forsaken once Touchstone comes on the scene and the two of them start swilling wine and shedding garments at an al fresco picnic. Melville and Tichenor’s randyness is fodder for the occasional broken fourth wall and good for plenty of laughs.

In the romantic comedy corner, Misaye’s Rosalind is too bowled over by her passion to think about having much fun. Which is the conundrum that Shakespeare has created for what is arguably his greatest female character. Dressed up as the boy Ganymede, Rosalind can set aside most of her worldly cares and woes to focus entirely on schooling Orlando and those around her in the ways of love. Except she’s herself too deeply in love – and too enmeshed in the goings on – to enjoy this opportunity or figure a way out. Misaye takes to her drag and to Rosalind’s ringleader duties. With Lancaster’s largely game Orlando, love hurts but it can also tickle.

The music is sweet, the players skilled and the setting is bucolic. ISC free Shakespeare patrons only get one production this summer, but it’s a winner.

AS YOU LIKE IT plays through September 1 in Griffith Park. 

Photo of David Melville and Daisey Tichenor by Reynaldo Macias Photography

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