"Shakespeare done lovingly ... for a delightful evening"

June 26, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Sarah Rafferty now lighting up the stage in As You Like It at Shakespeare and Company is a joy to behold and a delight not to be missed. Her Rosalind is saucy, gay and spirited as well as agile, gallant and witty. Her laughter is silver and her realism never lets her down. She can joke at Orlando’s feeble rhymes and observe, "Men have died from time to time...but not for love." but she can fight cannily, in her male disguise, not to be one of those men. She wins her love and our hearts and is a glorious addition to Shakespeare and Co.

She is ably abetted by another "debut" actress, Anne Gottlieb, in the role of cousin Celia who flees with her from Court to the Forest of Arden, complaining all the way but also wittily entering Rosalind’s pursuits.

There is magic in these two characters in each scene they share beginning with a beautiful one on a great white rug against which their black court-attire stands out. Eventually she will have her own romance in the forest, but in the meantime, she participates actively and wittily in Rosalind's.

Orlando (Michael Milligan) is brave and desperate and has, like Rosalind, experienced love at first sight. He is so desperate to learn how to woo her that he agrees to let the male-disguised Rosalind teach him — a game fraught with a certain amount of peril when he realizes that he is has fallen half in love with the boy she pretended to be. Every kind of love rollicks through this play and the boy-girl one of them gets witty attention when a minor character, but one well-crafted, the shepherdess Phoebe (Susannah Millonzi) wants to marry Rosalind.

The two key roles of Touchstone and Jacques are played effectively and engagingly by well-loved Company regulars, Kevin G. Coleman and Jonathan Epstein. Coleman in motley is one of Shakespeare’s most amusing creations. The role gives the actor lots of scope and he takes it, commenting on the action and at times bringing the soaring characters down to earth.

Epstein as the melancholy Jacques (a role he created in the 1990 production) broods over the light-hearted lovers and his conclusion of the many joyous matings at the play’s end is: "Another flood, and these couples are coming to the arc." He is especially effective in the long "ages of man" speech which he plays with great vocal variety and timing that let us hear the well-known (and memorized by many school-children, at least in my day) lines that seem fresh and new.

Also reprising his roles in the former production is Dennis Krausnick who is hysterically funny-garbed as the vicar in royal purple and making the sign of the cross over all proceedings, and is especially moving as the faithful old servant Adam whose purity of spirit has brought out the best in the young man. Their scene of fishing in act I (that leads to their appearance in Arden in act II) is a well-staged and charming one, and the simple goodness of the old man will lead Orlando in the Forest to literally fight (until he finds out he does not need to) for food for him.

Both Dan McCleary and James Robert Daniels offer contrasting double roles. McCleary as Silvius, shepherd wooing the resisting Phebe creates such a youthful and innocent role one is amazed to remember his stony Coriolanus of a few years ago. He also appears effectively as a very different character early in the play as Charles the Wrestler.

Daniels plays both Dukes — the banishing wicked one in black and the benevolent banished one in white. The doubling is a good directorial idea and Daniels handles both competently bringing out subtle nuances of difference in the roles.

Jason Asprey competently changes character completely within his chief role, tranforming the brutal brother of Orlando into a repentant wooer of Celia in a second love-at-first sight event in the play. And for good measure he provides comic relief in the forest as a bright blue-clad shepherd who slouches about.

The cast is roughly balanced with Shakespeare & Company veteran actors and new-comers who fit well into the ensemble, and all play with brio and skill. The play is full of varying moods with quick and effective scene and lighting changes, and once the actors arrive in The Forest of Arden, the whole audience is there with them and glad to be there.

Director Eleanor Holdridge has envisioned her play well and seen to it that it is mounted simply but magnificently. Costumes, minimal but effective scenery, and bold color contrasts define the world in which the play swirls and ensure that though most of the l6 member cast double in roles, place and character are always magically right.

The opening act in court is all black and white, from the floor tiles to the elegant costumes. In the forest, white costumes dominate with occasional splashes of vivid color for the low-comedy shepherds.

This is an extremely effective production. No caveats. It is Shakespeare done lovingly with fidelity to the text and with lots of imagination weaving through it. It makes for a delightful evening.