BWW Preview: TCC's CURATE SHAKESPEARE: AS YOU LIKE IT a Witty Delight

Fans and foes of William Shakespeare have all experienced, in some part of their lives, a wreck of a Shakespeare production. All the dastardly back-stage drama, farce by nature, comes bustling out onto whatever innocent high-school stage to bastardize the Bard in high-fashion. Or, perhaps you are the few, the unhappy few, who have ventured out into community, or even professional, theatres to witness catastrophe with a higher ticket price. Don Nigro's Curate Shakespeare: As You Like It is Noises Off meets The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged, high-brow nonsense of a catastrophe slowly becoming joyous. Tallahassee Community College begins their season with this retelling of As You Like It, with the Bard's characters played by excellent actors playing horrid ones, performing all the roles and requirements of the show in a chaotic mess that couldn't be more serene.

Sitting with director Jacob Harrelson as the cast ran for the first time, the blur between the play's measured insanity and the careful precision of his production became clearer by the line. Curate Shakespeare places an imaginary audience into the no-ticket-sold production of As You Like It (with a majority of the cast missing), with a crazed curate pushing his seven actors to do the full show. The politics and relationships of the performers make this challenge even more arduous, and the silly show that follows is pure wit and folly.

Harrelson is a brave director, but his obvious dedication bleeds across the stage. All rehearsal, he furiously scribbled notes from the opening message and beyond the dimming of lights. His nearly forty-minutes of notes were as detailed as if he wrote the show himself, his soul is obviously very invested in creating the best possible show.

His cast is equally receptive. Keeping the show very well-monitored is a challenge when you balance Elizabethan and modern, but each note was met with discussion and understanding. Even a week before opening, the show seemed crisp at first-glance, but the perfectionist in each of the production team seemed to want more.

The production about chaos has been marred by its own backstage issues, ranging from loss of cast members mid-rehearsal process, to the serious injury of a performer. Andrew Falls was in a car accident that has left him wheelchair bound, something he has only used to better his performance. He's using his pain as humor, transforming the character he was given into a different man entirely.

Nothing stands in the way of the performers pushing the show further, even Daniel Santillana, who was just given his script a week ago. The actor takes on a bulk of As You Like It's most famed speeches, an outrageous love interest on the stage, and has already come together with the rest of the cast. His growth is remarkable, with no guesses as to where he'll be by opening.

Leading the cast, in a whimsical narratorial role, is Erin Lustria. Lustria's performance is already smooth, with the fluidity of Alan Cumming's Emcee but the steeled physical humor of Robin Williams. Her role is Curate's Fool, Rosalind, who drops helpful narration in the show-within-the-show, interrupting with her own knowledge, and receiving little attention from the rest. From her entrance, it becomes hard to look away and miss the show Lustria gives for the entire two-acts, a show vying for acknowledgement through sheer stage presence and purity.

Alongside her are fellow performers Chelsea Hart-Cantabene and Alexa Roddenberry as stressed-out, washed up actresses struggling to endure the Curate's demands. Hart-Cantabene brings a willful balance to the insane farce of her surroundings, giving clarity and reality back to her imaginary audience. Roddenberry is having a blast becoming the worst actress she can be, giving the worst Shakespearean monologues, dialects, and verse. Gerain Arias plays an amateurish young actor forced into Shakespeare's leading Orlando, giving adept physicality and clownish humor to rival Santillana and Lustria in his bolsterous ham. Behind all the silliness, the farce, the chaotic upheaval each role brings, is Matthew Thompson, who brings Harrelson's goals to life. Thompson plays the director and curate, a dash of ambituous reality holding the ropes to tie everything together. Always watching, ever present behind the foul-ups and giving Lustria direction, Thompson gives real feel to it all.

Even though tech week has yet to arrive, Harrelson and his team have moved forward into running lighting, a shockingly professional design by Todd Teagarden. Moving between a 'normal' lighting for the players assembling, a full design to match As You Like It, transitioning specials and cues, it's all very quick and subtle. Far from giving it a small, student-level lighting rig, Teagarden goes for the gold in his aim, something already visually stunning a week from open.

Despite what they tell me, that it isn't ready, Curate Shakespeare: As You Like It is ready to captivate audiences. TCC is outdoing themselves in the detailed challenges, showcasing a truly astonishing cast and crew prepared to show you how the whole world truly is a stage.

Curate Shakespeare: As You Like It runs September 29th-October 9th at TCC's Turner Auditorium. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door. Photo credits: Melina Myers.

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