Summary 
Charming outdoor romance played with cartoon-style lightness, as 1930s-style mobsters and flappers chase an appealing pair of would-be lovers into the forest. The exiled Duke's merry band features a guitar-strumming Amiens and a jaded tuxedo-clad Jaques among the comically rural rustics, and the second act features a tour de force stand-up comedy turn by a hyper-animated Touchstone.
Design
Directed by Tim Ocel. Costumes by B. Modern. Set by Andrew Boyce. Lights by Michael A. Peterson. Sound and original music by Josh Schmidt. Choreographed by Maureen Janson.
Cast
Darragh Kennan (Oliver), Matt Schwader (Orlando), Paul Bentzen (Adam/Hymen), Brian Mani (Duke Frederick/Duke Senior), Tiffany Scott (Celia), Hillary Clemens (Rosalind), David Daniel (Touchstone), Eric Parks (Le Beau), Michael Huftile (Charles), James Ridge (Jaques), Marcus Truschinski (Amiens), Mark D. Hines (Corin), Nicholas Harazin (Silvius), Ashleigh LaThrop (Phebe), Colleen Madden (Audrey).
Analysis
Tim Ocel's charming As You Like It at the American Players Theatre (APT) up-the-hill space is a modernization to the 1930s, with Orlando's working-class world marked by upstage crates in front of a platform balcony, chain link fences in moveable sections, and stacks of apple boxes near a tall orchard ladder. Cockeyed upstage walls represent a wood framed house with shadows from forest trees. Paul Bentzen, in costume as the old serving man Adam, delivers pre-curtain admonitions against photography and cell phones - and cellophane - then turns to begin 1.1 as a boyishly earnest Orlando enters. Matt Schwader's handsome Orlando drags a thick wooden branch against the chain link then breaks it in frustration against the fence post. He wears jeans and boots, and a vest over a flannel shirt, in contrast to his prissy brother Oliver, who arrives in a three-piece double-breasted suit with necktie, his hair slicked back. Oliver shakes Orlando's hand from his shoulder but is overwhelmed and subdued within a choke-hold arm-lock by Orlando. Oliver plots his younger brother's demise with his personal assistant Dennis, who wears a sweater vest plus thick spectacles and carries a clipboard, and the burly wrestler Charles in a beret and a bomber jacket. When Oliver takes out his wallet and offers folded bills as a bribe to murder Orlando, Charles hesitates, so Oliver adds more cash, then combs his hair back in self-satisfied smugness.
Hillary Clemens makes her APT debut with a thoroughly charming star turn as Rosalind, both a spunky and likeable heroine in danger and in disguise as well as a smitten leading lady in a romance with Schwader's equally lovestruck and moon-eyed Orlando. Clemens' Rosalind arrives 1.2 above the stage in a tan and orange dress, carrying a handbag, sporting a kicky hat, and wearing long white gloves. She and her companion Celia dally with David Daniel's scene-stealing Touchstone, a sardonic clown in a yellow and green sweater-vest and high socks like a golfer gone grandiose with his twirling walking stick and signature-move rim-shot tap dance. Touchstone refers derisively to "Duke Freder-dick" but he and the ladies steer clear of the Duke and his cartoon-style gangsters in black-and-gray suits and fedoras, smoking cigarettes with their molls in curled hair and long gowns wrapped in feather boas.
The 1.2 wrestling match between Schwader's suddenly intimidated Orlando and the fearsome Charles is presided over by an anachronistic Le Beau, wearing Converse sneakers and sporting a referee whistle. Rosalind becomes physically enamored with the shirtless Orlando, who does pushups and warm-up stretching exercises deep up an aisle within the audience. When the match begins, Charles lunges at Orlando, but Schwader screams and scurries away in comic terror, but ultimately kicks out Charles' knee for the win. The Duke pulls back an envelope stuffed with winnings when he hears the name of Orlando's father, but Rosalind clasps a pendant necklace around Orlando's neck. They share a lingering look until Schwader's speechless Orlando flees the stage. Clemens' Rosalind bemoans her exile - "full of briars is this working day world" - at the order of the imposing Duke Frederick, a dark-suited mobster who looms elevated upstage in his mustache and slicked-back hair. Clemens' expressive heroine turns to the audience downstage, her hands at her throat and tears in her eyes, weeping with an endearing elegance.
Ocel presents the exiles as 2.1 hunters in hats and heavy coats, wielding shotguns to the sound effect of whistling wind. Duke Senior, identifiable by a red scarf and wire-rimmed spectacles, leads the merry band much like Robin Hood, and his troupe includes Le Beau, a limping Charles, and Amiens singing - "under the greenwood tree" - and strumming an acoustic guitar. Paul Bentzen's Adam, in a white jacket over black vest with bow tie and striped tuxedo pants like a butler or maître d'hôtel, follows Schwader's Orlando as they escape, rushing downstage past the chain link fences as sirens sound. Celia and Rosalind also flee, Clemens now disguised as Ganymede in denim overalls and flannel shirt, with boots and a newsboy hat. The ladies soon encounter denizens of the forest, Corin and Silvius in jeans and boots putting up a sign - "for sale this space and sheep" - before the lovelorn Silvius rushes off through the audience: "Phebe! Phebe!" When Celia complains of thirst and hunger - "I faint almost to death" - Corin offers her a restorative jug of moonshine whiskey.
Ocel offers a few moments of poignant drama in his fast-paced comedy, which deftly balances the charming romance between Rosalind and Orlando with the spirited comedy of Touchstone in the forest. James Ridge plays a jaded Jaques as a distraught city slicker out of his element in the country. Ridge's Jaques wears a frayed tuxedo beneath a battered black raincoat, calling for more music from Amiens before gathering his friends in a circle. And Bentzen's old Adam collapses in offstage bushes, sending Schwader's panicked Orlando into the Duke's camp, where he is shocked to be welcomed: "I blush and hide my blade." While Amiens strums his guitar, Jaques delivers the strong seven-ages-of-man speech while Orlando uses a spoon to feed Adam from a tin of beans. Ocel's musical scene - "thou winter wind" - stresses the camaraderie of the exiles, and as the hunters fashion a dining table with an old door over two wooden crates, Amiens is joined in a duet, before Charles and Le Beau begin to break their camp.
Ocel presents Shakespeare's third act with characteristic romance and humor, bringing the show to a joyful intermission before beginning again on a somber note with the passing of Adam. After Oliver is intimidated 3.1 by the cigar lighting Duke Frederick, Orlando races across the stage with his love poems - "run, Orlando, run; carve on every tree" - and Daniel's colorful Touchstone stands elevated upstage, still in his golfing outfit but with rubber work boots, tossing bales of hay to the stage with the shepherd Corin. Touchstone is comically bored, struggling with a bale overhead that topples him backward before some repartee - "the tree yields bad fruit" - affords him the opportunity for more rim shot dance moves. Clemens' Rosalind yanks the hiding Celia from behind a bale of hay, and she dances and squeals, gleeful and deliriously in love with Schwader's Orlando. Celia stares, mouth agape, as a blackout brings intermission, but the production resumes with sadness, spot lit men visible offstage right, apparently digging a grave in the hillside woods. In a moment it becomes apparent that the grave is Adam's, and music plays as the men carry Adam across the stage wrapped in a sheet. Schwader's Orlando kneels to plant a crucifix of twigs upon which he tenderly hangs Adam's white tuxedo jacket.
The remainder of Ocel's production alternates Rosalind's romantic triangle with the comic antics of Daniel's Touchstone. Touchstone pursues the earthy Audrey - "I am not a slut!" - who gives a high-pitched squeal at his proposal of marriage that he excitedly matches. Daniel expertly involves the audience, gesturing to the crowd as "no assembly but horned beasts" and when he says "many a man has horns," he points out "that guy right there." When his marriage to Audrey is postponed, he whisks his money away from Oliver Martext, a pretend-priest in wig and top hat with a bottle of beer, but Oliver pickpockets him. Wrapped around Daniels' Touchstone scene is Clemens' wide-eyed dark-haired Rosalind, peppering Celia with questions - "answer me in one word!" - then becoming weepy at a parting with Orlando: "go your ways." She flails melodramatically upon the hay, the back of her hand over her eyes, moaning inconsolably while city-girl Celia hangs bedding sheets on a clothes line then patiently folds laundry. Schwader's Orlando shares a cute on-stage chemistry with Clemens' Rosalind, and they gaze in each others' eyes and beam in bright smiles, and he concludes 4.1 - "two o'clock is your hour" - with a gentle chuck of her chin, then a smile and a wave.
Ocel continues his expert alternations into the concluding scenes. Daniel's Touchstone defeats his romantic rival William - holding a wrench and an automobile tire - then transforms 5.1 into a Robin Williams-like improv comedy routine. Wielding his golf club like a microphone, he lurches into the audience to elicit responses, and he affects an array of accents and voices with Jim Carrey-like speed, from John Wayne to Richard Nixon, and he makes faces, pretends to throw a bomb, and mimics pulling out a heart and eating it. The bravura sequence concludes with Daniel's Touchstone holstering invisible six-guns then collapsing onto his back to wild audience applause. Clemens' Rosalind then shares a quiet 5.2 moment with her Orlando, sitting next to him atop a large wooden crate - "how bitter a thing it is to look at happiness through another man's eyes" - and offering a tentative resolution to all the romantic entanglements: "I can do strange things!"
Daniel's Touchstone, now an audience favorite with his every movement inciting giggles, wears a bow tie and a straw hat, executing wicked dance moves and swinging his golf club as if an erection in 5.3, and he is joined by Amiens and his guitar - "with a hey and a ho" - and then the god Hymen 5.4. Hymen represents something of the reincarnation of Adam, with Bentzen playing him as a long-haired grayed old hippie in a straw hat and overalls and singing into a microphone. While Touchstone and Audrey make out, kissing and pawing each other with moaning passion deep within the audience, Clemens' Rosalind returns with a beaming smile and a flower in her hair, and the entire cast turns to look up the center aisle of the theatre as if in anticipation of the appearance of the bride at a church wedding. She manages to resolve all the romantic conflicts - Phebe: "then my love adieu" - as Bentzen's Hymen croons "great Juno's crown" like an old country standard to Amiens' guitar strumming, and the four to-be- wedded couples dance onstage to spontaneous audience applause. Rosalind and Orlando share a big kiss and bigger embrace, and when Silvius gently kisses Phebe's cheek, she launches herself passionately into his arms.
With Corin watching with satisfaction from above, rocking in his old wooden rocker and puffing a corncob pipe, Orlando and Oliver's brother arrives and the Duke cries out "play music!" Ridge's intrigued Jaques opts for spiritual retreat with Duke Frederick and Audrey joins Touchstone in his signature rim-shot tap dance, but the final moment belongs to Hillary Clemens' ebullient Rosalind. She delivers her gracious epilogue farewell with the charm and confidence of her entire performance, an endearingly sweet stage debut brimming with humor and passion.