Summary 
Elegantly staged romantic comedy eschews darker elements for light humor, with the whimsical falling-in-love story brilliantly costumed in the British Regency style. A thoroughly professional production with a robust young Orlando and a mature and refined Rosalind bolstered by original music, clearly told in a comfortably languid - if sometimes plodding - pace.
Design
Directed by Gary Griffin. Scenic design by Kevin Depinet. Costume design by Mara Blumenfeld. Lighting design by Christopher Akerlind. Sound design by Joshua Horvath and Ray Nardelli. Original music by Jenny Giering. Wig and make-up design by Melissa Veal.
Cast
Matt Schwader (Orlando), Dennis Kelly (Adam), Jeff Parker (Oliver), Nathan Hosner (Charles/William), Chaon Cross (Celia), Kate Fry (Rosalind), Phillip James Brannon (Touchstone), Matt DeCaro (Duke Frederick/Sir Oliver Martext), Kevin Gudahl (Duke Senior), David Turrentine (Corin), Steve Haggard (Silvius), Patrick Clear (Jaques), Hillary Clemens (Audrey), Elizabeth Ledo (Phoebe).
Analysis
Celebrated Chicago director Gary Griffin makes his Shakespeare debut with an elegant As You Like It at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Griffin crafts a clearly told, almost whimsically simple early 1820s romance upon the expansive thrust stage, a swaying pendulum denoting the passage of time as if from a massive grandfather's clock. The inexorable ticking echoes Jaques' melancholy Seven Ages of Man speech - and perhaps the maturity of the lead role, Rosalind - in one of the few components of the production that are not lightweight, romantic, and amusing.
Griffin begins with Adam and Orlando descending from the fly on an oversized garden swing, dropping to downstage center, eating apples in their rustic booted attire. Matt Schwader's long-haired Orlando, a boyishly handsome and athletic young lead, snaps his fingers and the swing lifts away and his stern older brother Oliver appears. Schwader's fiery Orlando displays his rugged physicality in the first of a series of illustrative scenes, arguing with his suited brother then grappling with Oliver and throwing him to the ground, before honorably helping him back to his feet.
Griffin's 1.2 introduces Rosalind and Celia - Kate Fry as the former in elegant purple, and the saucy Chaon Cross as the latter in spunky yellow - both wearing long white gloves, their hair up in elaborate coifs. The beautiful costumes cleverly evoke the post-revolutionary United States, with its battle for independence lending insight into the main characters' flight from the despotic Duke Frederick, into the rebellion of a younger generation, and into their soul-changing romantic revolutions. Rosalind's and Celia's gowns, from the British Regency era, also reflect the individualistic female spirit within the romantic pre-Victorian age. The attendants of the 1.2 wrestling exhibition wear similar gowns and powdered white wigs, the men in tightly buttoned but form-fitting military uniforms.
Kate Fry's expressive Rosalind, more refined and mature than is typical of the role, is graceful in speech and poised in action, then somewhat awestruck in love-at-first-sight jitters in the presence of Orlando. Schwader's shirtless Orlando does chin-ups from a lighting rig and stretches, flexes, and exercises just off stage, his bravado belying his innate lack of confidence when he, too, becomes apparently mute and amusingly slack-jawed in love with the statuesque Rosalind. His Orlando, upon a large circular yellow mat unrolled for the wrestling match, launches himself boldly at the towering Charles, head-butting his opponent's mid-section before becoming enveloped in a bear hug and hoisted high in the air. But Orlando of course prevails, with pluck and strength and agility, flipping Charles for the pin and the win, then stepping on his chest to accept the prize money from Duke Frederick and a chain necklace from the enamored Rosalind. Their silences and sudden stammering are charming, both out of their element in the abrupt vulnerability of love, especially since Rosalind is older and more mature, taller and much more sophisticated. Cross's Celia, oddly enough, with all her sassy expressiveness and coy wit, along with her blonde hair and diminutive bearing, seems a more suited match to the gutsy Orlando.
Fry's Rosalind exudes a refined elegance that if not icy still seems restrained and mannerly, but her infatuation with Orlando begins to crumble the façade, and she languishes 1.3 upon a rug in near darkness before confessing her feelings to Celia, later embracing her friend like a school girl, weeping until Orlando finally arrives. Once banished and in disguise as the boyish man Ganymede, she collects Orlando's love poems in the forest with surprising naïveté and a self-aggrandizement that reveals her lack of confidence in love from a younger man. Cross's Celia gives her a tart curtsy, amazed and more than a little pleased at Rosalind's lack of awareness ("and yet again wonderful!"), edging closer with her arms folded to eavesdrop as her friend encourages the sputtering Orlando to woo "him" as if she was Rosalind herself. As for Schwader, his robust Orlando reveals himself as something of a love struck twit, athletically swinging to the stage and flinging his horrendous love poems in the air, bringing intermission as the letters swirl around him like fluttering white doves.
Griffin presents the 2.1 exiles with CST stalwart Kevin Gudahl as a commanding Duke Senior like Robin Hood with a band of merry men. The floorboards upstage seem to have come loose and risen to become the trunk of a massive willow-like tree, and glittering green and gold tendrils sway at the rear of the performance space. The upstage pendulum ticks away passing time as Patrick Clear's tall and scholarly Jaques begins his poignant musing on the ages of mankind. Clear, in a thoughtful and melancholy performance, is an understudy for Ross Lehman, a CST regular with a performance style of blustery and irascible dry humor. Clear's characterization lends a decidedly different tone to the production, a dash of intellectualism and melancholy, especially with the banished exiles. Clear's cerebral observer rests on his knees beneath a black umbrella as Amiens croons "hey nonnie nonnie" and the merry men make camp with baskets and blankets. Gudahl's rightful Duke exhibits innate honor, helping 2.7 to carry sickly old Adam to the camp, giving him the coat off his back while Schwader's Orlando devours an entire apple in a few quick bites.
The secondary romances - the urbane Touchstone with the goat-herd Audrey, moon-eyed Silvius prancing after the no-nonsense Phoebe - are sub-plots that move slowly but lend subtle insights into the romantic escapism that is the Forest of Arden. Audrey is played in lovely near-silence by Hillary Clemens, whose portrayal of Rosalind in the 2010 As You Like It at Wisconsin's American Players Theatre was a charming success, enacted opposite, interestingly enough, Matt Schwader as Orlando. In Griffin's production, Audrey wipes her nose in an endearing sniffle - "I am foul!" - as Touchstone finds he cannot resist romantic pursuit, summoning Sir Oliver, a Ben Franklin look-a-like in round wire-rimmed spectacles and long gray hair, to quickly marry them.
But the true romance of As You Like It is between Fry's Rosalind and Schwader's Orlando, and when they share a "practice" kiss 3.3, he staggers from the stage - "and so ... adieu" - in amusing confusion, deeply in love but having just passionately kissed another man. After Rosalind faints at the sight of Orlando's blood, shed in defense of his undeserving brother, and the arrival of Silvius' idiot rival and Oliver himself - much to the delight of Cross's Celia - Fry's Rosalind displays glowing inner confidence despite her exasperation at all the romantic complications. She moves herself to tears 5.1, promising everyone - including herself - that she will soon set everything right.
The conclusion unfolds slowly but surely amid original music and falling leaves, with a beautiful counterpoint harmony reprise of "hey nonnie nonnie" and Touchstone's deft explanation of the ways to prevaricate. Fry's Rosalind does indeed set everything right, returning to the stage in green light as her lovely former self in a white wedding gown, restoring order without the divine intervention from the excised Hymen. Phoebe gifts Silvius with a surprisingly gentle kiss, and Clear's Jaques naturally excuses himself to join the religiously reformed Frederick, then finally Gudahl's restored Duke - "proceed!" - leads the cast in a foot-stomping and hand-clapping song and dance that culminates in leaps and shouts. Griffin wisely moves the epilogue to after the curtain call and well-deserved applause, as Fry's Rosalind shares her closing speech with Schwader's Orlando, the two alternating lines, alone together onstage until a blackout.