Summary 
Breezy outdoor romantic comedy with faint echoes from the 1930s. Buoyed by a strong Baldwin-brother look-alike Orlando and especially by a charming portrayal of Rosalind, the story unfolds in front of a cartoony papier-mâché apple orchard backdrop. An engagingly played series of songs from the Duke's merry band help overcome some of the story's weaker elements, as do a pleasant Touchstone and a majestically-voiced Jaques.
Design
Directed by James Alexander Bond. Costume design by Rachel Laritz. Scenic design by John Stark. Lighting design by Julie Mack. Sound design and musical compositions by Michael Rasbury. Dance choreography by Greg Merriman.
Cast
Dylan Paul (Orlando), Henson Keys (Adam), David Price (Orlando), Alexander Pawlowski IV (Charles/William), Amanda Catania (Celia), Gracyn Mix (Rosalind), Nick Demeris (Touchstone), Matt Penn (Duke Frederick), Charlie Wright (Silvius), David Sitler (Duke Senior), Daver Morrison (Jaques), Lisa Wartenberg (Phebe).
Analysis
Director James Alexander Bond hints at a 1930s setting for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's As You Like It, especially in the costuming - wool vests, cotton dress shirts, long pencil dresses, flowery designs - and the working-man folk-tune style of the music and songs. The production is staged in front of a two-dimensional orchard of cartoon-style apple trees, a ladder and some tree stumps visible onstage, the gallery space unutilized. A flirting pair of orchard workers set a romantic tone, he pinching her bottom, she giggling coquettishly and racing away.
Gracyn Mix's big-eyed Rosalind elevates Bond's production, an earnest beauty played with the sass and smarts of a 1930s Hollywood movie heroine. Tall and lean with shortish blonde hair, Mix's Rosalind wears a peaches-and-cream colored gown along with hat and gloves, accompanied by the smaller and darker though similarly attired Celia. Mix's Rosalind is a delight of coy moves and girlish swagger, sagging and collapsing when banished by Duke Frederick in 1.3, then rallying to butch up and give Celia a playful punch on the arm. She arrives in the forest of Arden 2.4 in brown wool pants and a man's dress shirt, hair under hat and fists on hips, like an intrepid explorer, Touchstone trailing behind her with a semi-conscious Celia slung over one shoulder.
Touchstone is nicely underplayed, a pleasant comic foil rather than a caustic buffoon, young and curly-haired, making his first appearance in a suit but pretending to ride a galloping horse. He is transformed in the country, wearing suspenders for his 2.4 banter with Corin, and then he is chasing after the bare-bellied Audrey with a tree axe over one shoulder. Touchstone woos her without propriety, walking his fingers up her arm until she slaps his hand away, then motor-boating her bosom. The humor plays well, better than the belching Sir Oliver Martext, a wince-inducing boor who pretends to relieve himself on the upstage trees, then gives a showy grunt and takes out a flask. Audrey is a nearly silent cow-girl who scratches herself rudely, launches herself bodily at Touchstone, and executes a racy square dance in 5.3 that ends with her embraced but upside down in a quite provocative position.
Dylan Paul, Romeo at last year's Festival, plays Orlando with the looks of a Baldwin brother but with a beefy country-boy charm, pushing a wheelbarrow 1.1. Protective of tiny old Adam in his rimmed glasses and plaid jacket, Paul's Orlando brawls with his brother Oliver, an oily fop in hat and gloves and cane, boots and goatee and bow tie. Their wrestling match frightens the orchard romancers, who flee offstage in panic, and as Adam cries out, Orlando subdues his brother in a half-nelson. Confronted again 1.2 by the gangster-like Duke Frederick - wearing circle-rimmed sunglasses and with a henchman holding an open umbrella over him - along with his cartoonish champion, Charles - puffed up and smooth headed, with a swirling evil mustache slipping in the humidity of a July evening - Paul's Orlando again rises to a challenge. He defeats Charles - who resembles a Popeye cartoon villain - with a bite of the arm and a knee to the groin, and he impresses Mix's wide-eyed Rosalind, who gifts him with a necklace. Paul's Orlando tries over and over to thank her, but five straight efforts pass as he stammers and boyishly says nothing at all. On the run in Arden, he ministers to the exhausted Adam, who has warned him of danger - "this house is but a butchery" - and insisted on joining him in exile. In blue and orange moonlight, Paul's distraught Orlando is consoled by the banished Duke, a cooking pot hanging from a stick suspended over a campfire as Jaques begins the "Seven Ages of Man" speech.
Bond's presentation of the brothers in exile is standard fare - bows and arrows, vests, boots and berets - with the exception of Jaques and live folk music. Daver Morrison's Jaques stands distinctly apart - as the character should - with eloquence and a booming baritone that indicate not just a dissatisfaction with exile from the kingdom, but with the human condition in general. His convocation calling "fools into a circle" draws a surprised laugh from the audience as the merry men, gathered in a circle, slowly realize then quickly disperse. Morrison's dismay at a shot deer seems old-hat to the returning hunters, who comically betray the shooter to the hyper-moral Jaques, all pointing him out with accusing fingers. The folk music is a delight, songs like "Come Hither" sung with subtle effectiveness and accompanied by guitar, ukulele, accordion, washboard, and a makeshift bass that consists of string wired from a steel drum by a long wooden stick. Charlie Wright's love- and dumbstruck Silvius also deserves mention, perplexed and open-mouthed in an orange shirt and suspendered pants, running onstage and across, moaning out "Phebe, Phebe, Phebe" as he exits on the opposite side.
But Mix and Paul stand out best as Rosalind and Orlando, and Bond wisely focuses on their romance and the chemistry between the two performers. Paul's Orlando stumble-runs through the wood, pasting his love letters to trees, pausing to pretend to carve into a tree, the "bark" falling away to reveal the name "Rosalind" etched in the wood. And the adorably dense Rosalind slogs her way through the letters 3.2, Mix's heroine dropping to her knees in confusion as the wiser Celia fans herself more and more rapidly. She makes her own realization after a rapid-fire interrogation of Celia - "answer me in one word" - then covers her mouth and nods her head rapidly in understanding and feebly disguised glee. She turns the tables on Celia when she boldly confronts Orlando as Ganymede - "come and woo me" - with Celia now gaping in comic shock as the production reaches intermission.
The stars elevate the production, Mix's exasperated Rosalind-as-Ganymede bubbling like the best of 1930s movie starlets, gushing over Orlando, then becoming stiff-backed and strident with Phebe's amorous advances. She kneels 3.5 beside the green-frocked white-socked and big-eye-browed country girl - "sell when you can" - to break her heart gently. Celia sets up an elaborate 4.1 solo picnic stage left, with a goblet and a bottle of wine plus a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, better to observe her best friend tangle herself romantically with Orlando. Celia sips and watches, upending the bottle in a big swig as the supposedly masculine Ganymede kisses Orlando lustily on the mouth. Mix's Rosalind tries to play off the kiss with a proffered handshake, but Paul's disoriented Orlando bolts the stage in wide-eyed wonder. After Oliver helps the fainted Rosalind back to her feet 4.3, growing startled when he places a hand on "his" chest - "you lack a man's heart" - Celia fans herself with increasing rapidity, then fans a still-wobbly Rosalind, and finally just flirts with Oliver.
The conclusion is all Mix's grace and charm - "I can do strange things" - her Rosalind making so many promises to Orlando and Silvius and Phebe, as well as to herself - "and I for no woman" - that Paul's Orlando grows dizzy and falls to his behind. By the time the stage is crowded with the entire cast and Hymen has made his head-scratching flower-strewing intervention - confusing more than a few audience members - Mix's Rosalind has returned as her feminine self in a backless white wedding gown. The loose-ends are tied up quickly and neatly - Audrey wrapped bodily around Touchstone; Phebe jumping into Silvius' arms after a big kiss; Morrison's Jaques sharing a finger-wiggling secret handshake with Touchstone - and the guitarist leads a shouting, hands-clapping circle dance from atop a tree stump. Mix then concludes, appropriately, with a sweetly delivered epilogue, down front and center stage.