As You Like It by Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival at the Shakespeare Theatre Company Harman Hall (review)

Reviewed by: As You Like Itby Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival at the Shakespeare Theatre Company Harman Hall Michael J. Collins As You Like ItPresented by Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festivalat the Shakespeare Theatre Company Harman Hall, Washington, DC. 212 2023– 1401 2024. Adapted and directed by Daryl Cloran. Music by Ben Elliott. Choreography and fights by Jonathan Hawley Purvis. Scenic design by Pam Johnson. Costume design by Carmen Alatorre. Lighting design by Gerald King. Sound design by Alistair Wallace. With Henry Beasley (William/Jaques de Boys/Forest Lord), Jennifer Copping (Corin), Andrew Cownden (Jaques/LeBeau), Ben Elliott (Silvius/Forest Lord), Matthew Ip Shaw (Mustachio), Jeff Irving (Orlando), Kayvon Khoshkam (Touchstone), Alexandra Lainfiesta (Phoebe/Eleanor Rigby), Jennifer Lines (Dame Frances/Dame Senior), Matthew MacDonald-Bain (Oliver), uNorman Moses (Adam/Martext), Naomi Ngebulana (Celia), Evan Rein (Amiens), Chelsea Rose (Rosalind), Emma Slipp (Audrey/Lady Danger), Isaiah Terrell-Dobbs (Forest Lord), Marco Walker-Ng (Charles/Forest Lord), and Sally Zori (Forest Lord). This production of As You Like Itwas conceived by Daryl Cloran and the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver and first performed there in 2018. It subsequently played in Milwaukee and Chicago before opening at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Harman Hall in Washington, DC in December 2023. The production featured twenty-four songs by the Beatles interpolated into Shakespeare's script. Like the highly popular musical Mamma Mia!, which draws on ABBA's back catalog, characters or random members of the company (the Forest Lords in Arden) suddenly suspended the action of the play and began to sing and, sometimes, dance. After the wrestling match in 1.3, for example, Orlando and Rosalind collaborated on "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; Celia sang "We Can Work it Out" to encourage Rosalind to "be merry" in 1.2; and Touchstone and Audrey did a song and dance routine to "When I'm Sixty-Four" at their first appearance together in the Forest of Arden (3.3). Before the action of the play began, the actors staged a series of comic wrestling matches on a set that represented an arena. A wrestling ring stood at center stage and a banner, hung on a catwalk farther upstage, read "Dame Frances presents Superstar Wrestling Tonight: Charles '2 Guns' Leibowitz takes on all." A band (keyboard, guitars, and two drum sets) was located upstage where it remained for the duration of the play. As Charles took on his challengers, an announcer (played by Kayvon Khoshkam, who also played Touchstone) and members of the company encouraged the audience, some of whom were seated in three rows on the right and left of the stage, to cheer, boo, and heckle the wrestlers. When End Page 84the preshow ended and the first scene of the play began, Orlando and Adam were alone onstage, wearing overalls and sweeping up the arena after the wrestling matches. The ring remained onstage until the action moved to the Forest of Arden as an emblem of the conflict in the two families. It seemed odd, however, to have the actors moving continually in and out of it: Rosalind, Celia, and Dame Frances (a gender-flipped Duke Frederick played by Jennifer Lines) were inside the ring, for example, when Rosalind was banished. In the Forest of Arden, the ring was gone, and some trees, stumps, and a grassy patch replaced it. As the program indicated, the play was set entirely in the 1960s, and the Forest became the locus of a counterculture that embodied the freedom and camaraderie the court clearly lacked. At the very back of the stage, a panel designed to look like the left side of a Volkswagen bus, painted yellow and decorated with flowered decals, faced the audience. The actors discarded the conservative suits they had worn at court for the flowered shirts and bell bottom pants that had clothed the hippies in Haight-Ashbury in 1967. Dame Senior (also played by Lines) was similarly costumed with a guitar hung around her neck. The production (without the preshow) ran approximately two hours and forty minutes including a fifteen-minute interval. The script was heavily cut as a result...