Summary 
Striking modernization of As You Like It to the Russian Siberian forest during winter. Thematically the end of the cold war, with both Rosalind and Orlando more political refugee than romantic runaway. Military police patrol a stage featuring iron gates, cold lighting, and falling snow. The second act in the liberated forest is infused with comedy and color and an unequivocal - Jaques is more than happy to join a spiritual retreat - happy ending.
Design
Directed by David H. Bell. Set by James Leonard Joy. Costumes by Mariann Verheyen. Lights by Howard Werner. Sound by Brian Kettler. Original music by Henry Marsh.
Cast
Timothy Gregory (Orlando), James Harms (Adam), Mark Montgomery (Oliver), Saxon Palmer (Touchstone), Kate Fry (Celia), Elizabeth Laidlaw (Rosalind), Roger Mueller (Duke Frederick), Patrick Clear (Duke Senior), Ian Brennan (Silvius), Greg Vinkler (Jaques), Kate Buddeke (Audrey), Amy Montgomery (Phebe).
Analysis
Director David H. Bell boasts considerable musical theatre experience, and his previous Chicago Shakespeare Theater credits were light-hearted exercises, so his dark approach to As You Like It comes as something of a surprise. The first act plays in the onset of a Siberian winter with focus on political tyranny, the cruelty between brothers, and the isolation of deeper feelings.
The production begins in a light fall of snow, with Orlando and Adam, dressed in black, kneeling in mourning at the tomb of Orlando's father. The mottled green and black stage shines under cold white light, and forbidding iron gates upstage rise to the fly. Oliver, urbane and emotionless, interrupts their grief with curt demands, and when he takes his brother by the ear, Orlando spins and wrestles him into a behind-the-back arm lock. The brothers struggle, falling onto their father's burial place, and Adam separates them. Similarly, Russian solders intrude upon Rosalind and Celia's playful 1.3 exchanges ("Cupid have mercy!") and girlish pillow fight. The nighttime scene recalls a military-police home invasion and arrest, with Rosalind taken by the arms and led outdoors in her night dress.
The 1.2 wrestling match between Orlando and Charles is sandwiched between these two acts of violence. Bell constructs this scene in a similar fashion. After Russian-inflected music and singing with shouts of "hey!" at an opulent downstage banquet table, Rosalind and Orlando meet for the first time. Their drop-jawed and wide-eyed love at first sight endears, but the violence of the wrestling - with the added danger of an attempted murder - precludes romance. The wrestling sprawls across the stage, shifting back and forth with desperate violence, and when Orlando emerges the victor, Duke Frederick seizes him by the neck and draws a dagger.
The daunting political aspects of the play - sons and daughters of enemies of the state facing arrest and banishment - continue with 2.3 and 2.4. Under a full moon upstage, wind whistles and snow again begins to fall. Less like romantic runaways and more like political refugees fleeing for their lives, Rosalind and Orlando prepare to escape the coldness of their fatherless homes. In mirroring images, Rosalind, her long black hair bound into a ponytail and then severed by Celia, embraces her friend before they flee in one direction, and when Orlando reluctantly agrees to be joined in flight by Adam, they rush offstage the other way.
The first act concludes with the forest of "Arden" scenes. The forest denizens resemble gypsies, Silvius in a pointed cap and fingerless gloves and the barefoot Touchstone wearing an earring, while the banished Duke Senior and his outlaw band cling to the trappings of civilization. After "disarming" Orlando with calm kindness, the usurped Duke's men, still wearing remnants of their courtly clothing, assemble a camp with tables, utensils and candlesticks. They sing a contented "no enemies have we" and bustle with activity as Orlando feeds the nearly expired Adam. An intellectual Jaques - dressed in black and wearing wire-rimmed spectacles - brings the production to intermission with an impassioned "Seven Ages of Man" speech that carries even more weight in the freedom of the forest and its distance from the strife of the city: "give us some music," the Duke says as the outlaws light pipes and lie in repose.
Bell fuels the production's schizophrenia with a lively second act, filling the stage with activity. Orlando - charming and handsome but muscular and agile enough to be a formidable wrestler - plays like Hamlet in reverse. Angry and isolated throughout the first act, pushed several times beyond the brink of violence, he becomes a playful lover in the second act, stabbing trees with his romantic poems as he rushes through the liberation of the forest. And Rosalind, a trembling victim in nightclothes while in the city, emerges a convincing heroine as the disguised Ganymede. Clad in black leather pants, black boots, and a reddish waistcoat, she commands with playfulness, feeding Orlando grapes as he lies with his head in her lap, or as she leads Celia to follow the Duke's hunting expedition.
The second act also features much more color - the brightly lit gypsy costuming contrasts with the austerity of Adam in long gray hair, black coat, and wool cap while shivering in the 1.1 snowfall - and comedy, with the oversexed goatherd Audrey romanced by Touchstone and a busty Phebe attempting to end the imbecilic Silvius' advances by killing him.
The happy but unlikely changes of heart in Oliver and Duke Frederick seem more natural in this sunny environment, as well as less mystical, and the goddess Hymen is removed from the production. Changes are wrought by the environment, as orchestrated by Rosalind, and the quadruple country wedding takes place before flowered maypoles rather than the iron bars of the first act. After Adam gives a benediction over them all, Phebe launches at Silvius, attacking him with kisses, and a boyish Ganymede punches Orlando on the arm. When Orlando responds with a gentle kiss, Rosalind squeals with delight and embraces Celia.
Even the usually melancholy Jaques does not deter from the warmth of the universally happy ending. Jaques' decision to remain in the forest and pursue religious matters is presented more as spiritual opportunity than as a continuing of isolation and loneliness. As the others dance and sing their way off stage, he stands alone, holding a set of deer antlers in his hands and apparently in wonder at the change and freedom that has taken place within the forest.
Bell's dual conception of As You Like It makes for excellent theatre, with the odd choice of eastern European frigidity a fascinating contrast to the more usual pastoral comedy of the second act.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.20, No.2, Spring 2002.