‘AS YOU LIKE IT’ ENCHANTS WITH BARD’S WORDS
This past weekend, San Diego theatergoers had their pick of four different Shakespeare shows.
There was the vain, tap-dancing Shakespeare in “Something Rotten!” in Vista, a doo-wop version of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in Coronado and an Afrofuturist “A Midsummer Night's Dream” in Balboa Park. The latest arrival is “As You Like It,” which New Fortune Theatre Co. opened in an outdoor production Sunday in Point Loma.
Where the first three productions folded Shakespeare into imaginative musical, comic and other-worldly settings, New Fortune lets the Bard's words become the main attraction.
In his San Diego directing debut, Dan Hodge has fielded an exceptional 15-member cast who bring vitality, honesty and heart to the playwright's lyrical language. With little more than a bucket of apples, a hay bale, bows and arrows and a few strings of outdoor lights, the Westminster Presbyterian Church amphitheater becomes the vivid world of Shakespeare's pastoral comedy.
Written in 1599, “As You Like It” is about Rosalind, the daughter of the banished Duke Senior, who disguises herself as a boy, Ganymede, and escapes into the forest of Arden to find her father. There she finds the disinherited aristocrat Orlando, who has been posting love notes to Rosalind on the trees. In her guise as Ganymede, she helps Orlando devise a plan to win Rosalind's heart.
New Fortune's co-founders Amanda Schaar and Richard Baird both designed the production and anchor it with their performances. Schaar is luminous and mischievous as Rosalind, who grows to relish the freedom of discarding her 1950s crinoline dress and high heels for manly apparel and a pencil moustache. And Baird, with his sonorous voice and ability to melt into his characters, oozes world-weariness as the melancholy
fool, Jaques. His delivery of the “seven ages of man” speech (“All the world is a stage ...”) isn't so much performed as it is inhabited.
Balancing Jaques' heavy heart is the joyous fool Touchstone, played with a deft clownlike sensibility by Brian McCann, one of Hodge's frequent collaborators. Steven Lone bursts with impulsive emotions as Rosalind's love, Orlando, and Rachael VanWormer underplays with a gentle reserve Rosalind's bestie, Celia. Neil
McDonald shows his versatility as both the kindhearted exiled Duke Senior and the vicious usurping Duke Frederick. And Jaden Guerrero makes an impressive company debut playing the lute and singing a handful of his own folk-infused songs.
The acting ensemble also include Danny Campbell, Michael Rodriguez, Taylor Henderson, Durwood Murray, Walter Murray, Leigh Akin, Geoffrey Ulysses Geissinger and Xander Brown.
The play is about love in all its forms — romantic, sibling, parentchild and friend — and Hodge has worked closely with his cast to believably transmit all of the feelings we associate with love: crush, intoxication, lust, passion, generosity and deep devotion.
“As You Like It,” which runs fluidly despite its three-hour running time, is a joy to watch because these actors inhabit their roles so fully and they understand their characters' words and motivations. There are no false notes.