As You Like It

As You Like It is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.  I wouldn't say that it's his best, his most beloved, his most famous, his most inspired, but it is a play that survives the clumsiness of its storyline deftly, beautifully.  And the lines of love, sugary as they may be, speak to me as much as a 32 year old as they did at 16.  So that says something about Shakespeare, and it says something about The Acting Company, the guild that breathes life into Rosalinde and Celia and Touchstone and Orlando at the Guthrie.

As You Like It is known for giving us the famous, "all the world's a stage..."  followed by the seven ages of man. It's always fun to hear that line and watch it performed so effortlessly, drawing smiles and laughs for the artistry of the moment, and not solely for the recognition of a phrase we've uttered for generations. But there are other plum lines worth catching.  Silvius, wonderfully played by Michael McDonald, who also does a crowd-pleasing turn as Le Beau, is a goldmine for love-struck ramblings, made all the more pathetic by the object of his affection, the witchy flirt, Phoebe.

The centerpiece of the action is the star-crossed pair, torn apart by an evil uncle, kept apart by a silly, costumed lie requiring Rosalind to wander the Forest of Arden as a man. Elizabeth Stahlmann is a beautiful Rosalind, and a sweetly uncomfortable Ganymede, paired perfectly with Joseph Midyett's Orlando, who wins the heart of Rosalind before escaping to the Forest only to wander the set plastering ill-rhymed sonnets to trees. It's one of the many things I love about this play.  The lovers are somewhat ridiculous.  They aren't tragic figures for long, they're merely children wrapped up in love and circumstances that together make them quasi-moronic.  And everyone can relate to that.

The lovers stumble through their idiocy and into moments of truth and comedy, with vibrant characters by their side.  The loyal Celia, too me, has always been a bit of a throw away character.  Merely a player to set up Rosalind's escape, her traipsing through the forest, an ear to hear her love-struck moaning.  But Megan Bartle gives Celia delicious life, creating a story of her own, a physicality and flirtatiousness that I simply never gave Celia in my mind. That vibrancy made for engaging dialogue and teasing between the two women, allowing the audience to feel it was eavesdropping on a pair of gossip-prone girlfriends dissecting the love interest of the day.

The players are buffeted by a set that moves and moans with its own life, with actors donning animal heads and singing haunting, sweet melodies between scenes.  The liveliness of the Forest, almost a character itself, and the beauty of the music, created a fascinating environment in which to watch these lovers trip all over themselves, always to land, happily and finally, in each other's arms.

A beautiful show in the Dowling studio, and it plays through February 3, 2013.

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