Summary 
Elegantly staged As You Like It anchored by Impressionistic art as well as appealing performers and strong portrayals, especially a memorably melancholy Jaques. Standard staging, unremarkable but clearly delineated and entertaining, a quality production well worthwhile for a first-time Shakespeare playgoer.
Design
Directed by David Gilmore. Set by Michael Philippi. Costumes by Karin Kopischke. Lights by Joseph Tilford. Sound by Robert Neuhaus.
Cast
David Darlow (Jaques), Tom Daugherty (Orlando), William Dick (Touchstone), Michele Filpi (Adam), Neil Friedman (Duke Frederick), Phil Gigante (Amiens), Jason Eric Hays (Charles), Edward Jemison (Silvius), Colleen Kane (Phebe), Mariann Mayberry (Rosalind), Matt Penn (Oliver), Robert Scogin (Duke Senior), Deborah Staples (Celia), Tina Thuerwachter (Audrey), Benjamin Werling (Le Beau/Oliver Martext).
Analysis
Shakespeare Repertory concludes its season with a straightforward production of As You Like It opening on Shakespeare's birthday. The U.S. debut of David Gilmore, a guest director from Great Britain with an extensive list of credits with producer Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The set design takes advantage of the depth of the Ruth Page Theater, dividing the stage into three distinct sections of about equal size. A rectangular platform of green lawn thrusts downstage to the first rows of the audience and is bare except for a few boulders. Deep upstage is an impressionistic woodland backdrop behind a set of trees and shrubbery, with some branches intertwining through the overhead lighting. These two pastoral sections are separated by stone foundation walls that enclose a sunken gravel pit. The starkness of the pit and walls symbolizes the emotional barrier between the court and the surrounding forest of Arden. The court scenes - including painful-looking falls by both wrestlers in 1.2 - are enacted in a dusty crunch of gravel within the muted color of the stone walls.
The production opens with a silent, eleven-minute "prologue" that consists of Jaques and others playing a ball-toss game and socializing within the foundation walls while the audience takes their seats. The prologue is intended to depict townspeople in a courtyard who enact a play within a play, but in its opening night execution the prologue seems almost purposeless. Then Jaques delivers the first lines from the "all the world's a stage" soliloquy and, with a twirl of his walking stick, he gestures to Orlando and Adam, and the play begins.
Before 2.1 the entire upstage section of the set slowly slides forward on runners to rest atop the foundation walls, connecting the upstage forest with the downstage grass and thereby concealing the harshness of the "court." The now unbroken green expanse represents both physical and thematic re-connection with nature. Additional trees, raised upon green platforms, are maneuvered behind the moving section to create the illusion of a path winding through a forest. This extraordinary set is patterned after an Impressionist still-life by Le Sidaner entitled, "Tea in the Woods at Gerberoy."
The exiled Duke Senior and his followers are depicted in repose upon the moving section of stage. The set, now brightly lit as if with sunshine, is dappled with small shadows from the leaves. Later, the upstage backdrop darkens to simulate an evening sky, and chirping crickets can be heard. The outcasts share fruit and wine, and the songs Amiens sings are accompanied by lute and feature two-point harmony. The camaraderie in the lushness of the forest contrasts to the hostility Orlando and Rosalind encounter in their scenes at the "envious" court.
The costume design also is influenced by French Impressionism. The mens' attire is modeled upon Edouard Manet's "Lunch on the Grass," with Duke Frederick and his officers and courtiers wearing dark, austere frock-coats. In counterpoint, Celia and Rosalind, before the latter's banishment, wear delicate, widely-skirted pastel gowns. The softness of fabric and lightness of color make the ladies appear almost ethereal.
The depiction of Jaques furthers the impressionism theme, as he carries brush and palette and paints at an easel for much of the production. Jaques wears a vested white linen suit that is decidedly out of place in the forest and would even be inappropriate in Frederick's court. He is therefore visually as well as emotionally distinct from the other characters. During the Act 3 romance scenes he paints at his easel, seated alone at a vantage point upstage, partially obscured by the foliage around him. Jaques' emotional distance from the unifying power of love is ironic in light of his physical proximity. Further, he apparently feels an attraction to "Ganymede" that he reveals with prolonged gazes and an attempted caress of Rosalind's cheek. This affection is perhaps indicative of a frustrated homosexuality that contributes to the character's deeply rooted melancholy. (The more typical hints at lesbianism between Celia and Rosalind are absent in this production, which depicts only schoolgirl friendship.) Jaques plaintively offers a finished painting as a wedding gift to Rosalind and Orlando in 5.4.
Jaques' "seven ages of man" speech is the production's finest moment, delivered with movingly weary defeat. His solitary exit late in 5.4 represents Jaques not only forsaking the happiness of the four united - and heterosexual - couples, but the dwindling possibility for his own emotional contentment as well.
The production's pastoral escapism benefits from likeable portrayals of the lead characters. An animated Rosalind charms, especially in her lapses from her guise as Ganymede. At one point she falls to her knees and embraces Celia in delight, only to stand in embarrassment a moment later and resume speaking to Orlando in her deepened tone. An engaging chemistry is developed with "Signior Love" Orlando, who is played with energetic sincerity.
A slew of flourishes enliven the steadiness of this production. A broken-footed actor plays Touchstone, wearing an orthopedic shoe and moving about with surprising agility on crutches. The fool employs the crutches for verbal emphasis, as a weapon, and to punctuate bawdy puns. The woodland rustics speak with southern-American "hillbilly" accents that emphasize their rurality and ignorance. The accents are at first jarringly anachronistic - this is France in the late 1800s, after all - but are played for comic relief. For instance, Silvius is woefully - and comically - lovestruck, and he moves and speaks with dull slowness, although the sudden passion of his kiss when he wins Phebe in 5.4 prompts the previously shrewish woman to respond in kind. In a contrast of style, Le Beau is not just played with exaggerated foppishness but with subtle comic gestures. He elicits laughter when, before answering a question, he simply removes his hat and adjusts the swirl of hair across his forehead with an affected flourish.
The production concludes with a briskly paced 5.4. The role of the god Hymen is edited from the scene to streamline events. As a result, the union of the couples seems more a natural occurrence orchestrated by Rosalind than the outcome of divine intervention. The abrupt appearance of Jaques de Boyes also is portrayed with an amusing naturalness, as his implausible explanation is greeted with confused disbelief - rather than placid acceptance - by the crowd of characters facing him onstage. The performance ends with Rosalind's epilogue, spot-lit solo on the upstage lawn, and the overall effect is unabashed merriment in the matrimonial finale, with the notable exception of the memorably melancholy Jaques.
Note: a version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.13, No.3, Summer 1995.