As You Like It

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AS YOU LIKE IT

Photo: Joan Marcus

Cititour.com Review
How much you like – or even love – The Public Theater’s breezy musicalized version of “As You Like It,” now at the Delacorte Theatre – will depend on many factors. Do you hate when people tinker with Shakespeare’s text? Stay home. Do you believe amateur (or amateurish Equity actors) should not be on a professional stage? Stay home. (The production is part of the Public Works series, which uses members of community organizations to fill out its cast, some of whom are more accomplished than others.) Everyone else, however, is likely to have a very good time at this extremely likeable 90-minute comic romance, even if one doesn’t approve of all the alterations.

Fortunately, the show’s focus remains steadfastly on the romance between the banished, earnest courtier Orlando (brilliantly embodied by the charismatic Ato Blankson-Wood) and the pragmatic, high-born Rosalind (a perfectly cast Rebecca Naomi Jones). Like Orlando, she has also been exiled to the forest of Arden, where she dresses up in male disguise as the farmer Ganymede; and after encountering the lovestruck Orlando, she convinces him to woo “Ganymede” as if he were Rosalind (which she is).

The pair not only have excellent chemistry but manage to convey their complex feelings clearly through the show’s dialogue and co-adaptor Shaina Taub’s infectious songs, from “Will U Be My Bride” (featuring a fabulous faux boy band) to “Imagine I’m Your Lover” to Rosalind’s worldly-wise ballad “When I’m Your Wife.” They are so magnetic, in fact, I would’ve been fine to see almost all the other characters in the play disappear, save for Rosalind’s also-exiled father, Duke Senior, brought to joyous life by the great Darius De Haas (who will sadly miss most of the remainder of the run due to Covid).

Indeed, because of their excellence, it matters less (at least to me) that Taub and co-adaptor (and director) Laurie Woolery have played extremely fast and loose with most of the original play, shortening most of the romantic subplots so they’re basically mere plot devices. And it certainly doesn’t offend me that two of them -- now Silvia and Pheobe (the engaging Brianna Cabrera and the sassy Bianca Edwards) and Touchstone and Andy (the delightful Christopher M. Ramirez and the attractive Jonathan Jordan) – have been transformed into both same-sex and interracial couples.

However, while I’ve often been annoyed in other productions by the melancholy older “fool” Jaques, it remains a questionable choice to have this plum role played by Taub as little more than a grumpy young woman. And turning one of the Bard’s most poignant speeches “The Seven Ages of Man” into a happy ditty called “All’s the World the Stage” (that now opens the show) is honestly just plain wrong. (Sorry, not sorry.)

Regardless, Woolery and choreographers Sonya Tayeh and Billy Griffin ensure the show moves swiftly, and they smoothly incorporate some clever touches ranging from a recurring chorus of obedient minions for the villainous Duke Frederick (a menacing Eric Pierre) to the inclusion of a terrifying lion puppet or some galloping deer that look like they escaped from the current Broadway production of “Into the Woods.”

Of course, the one thing that hasn’t changed from the original play is the happy ending, with a quadruple marriage ceremony and the passing back of a rightful crown. How can you not like that?
By Brian Scott Lipton


Visit the Site
https://publictheater.org/

Open/Close Dates
Opening 8/30/2022
Closing 9/11/2022


Theatre Info
Delacorte Theater
Central Park (81st St & CPW or 79th St & Fifth Av)
New York, NY
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