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as you like it

As You Like It At The Stratford Festival

William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, now being presented at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre under the direction of Chris Abraham, is a pastoral comedy.

Well, it’s supposed to be. The play contrasts the regime of the usurper Duke Frederick of France with the idyllic and idealized exile of the usurped Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden.

As You Like It is a comedy in the classical sense. That is, no one gets killed – well, no one is supposed to get killed – and the play ends by reconciling two plus hours of mistaken identity, misadventure, and musings about the nature of love and poetry in a flurry of weddings, thus setting society to right once more.

Being a comedy, As You Like It should be played, to my way of thinking, with a light touch. Yes there are villains, but like those in a pantomime we are not meant to take them too seriously. And besides – spoiler alert – all the villains in As You Like It turn into good guys by play’s end.

Director Abraham has chosen to use As You Like It to make a statement about the dystopian turn the world has taken in recent times. Fair enough. But we all watch the tv news and the world is too much with us, especially those of us who live south of the Poutine Curtain. Wouldn’t it be nice to escape to the enchanting tale Shakespeare spins in As You Like It?

Nasty as Duke Frederick (a truly terrifying Sean Arbuckle) is, he has chosen to allow Rosalind (Sara Farb), daughter of the deposed Duke (Seanna McKenna), to stay in his court as companion to his daughter Celia (Makambe K. Simamba).

Perhaps I should mention here that Seanna McKenna, the doyenne of the Stratford Festival company, having mastered all the major female roles in the canon, is now chipping away at the male roles. She has played Richard III, Julius Caesar, Lear, Shylock, and even Jaques. Here she becomes, not Duke Senior, but simply “The Duchess.”

Meanwhile, Orlando (Christopher Allen), youngest son of the late Rowland de Boys, a member of the deposed duke’s court, is being mistreated by his evil brother Oliver (Andrew Chown), denied his inheritance, left uneducated and unsupported. When Oliver learns that Orlando plans to try his luck against the Duke’s prize wrestler, Charles (Joe Perry), he urges the brute to break his neck.

But Orlando prevails, provoking a lasting infatuation on the part of Rosalind (which he reciprocates in spades) and setting off a series of recriminations that result in what today would be termed the “self-deportation” of Orlando, accompanied by his father’s servant, Old Adam (an excellent John Ng), Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone (Steve Ross), a “fool” in the old duke’s court.

Fun fact: Scholars tell us that in the original production the role of Adam was played by Shakespeare himself.

The remainder of the virtually plotless As You Like It is given over to something of a disquisition on love and poetry, not simply the elevated love of Orlando and Rosalind, but the rustic (and unrequited) love of shepherds Silvius (Michael Man) and Phoebe (Jessica B. Hill), and the down and dirty lust of Touchstone and the goatherd Audrey (Silvae Mercedes).

Abraham has set As You Like It in a quasi-present that, in Duke Frederick’s court looks a lot like Stalinist Russia, with all the nastiness that implies. It’s winter and, in Abraham’s vision, famine stalks the land.

The Duke’s realm is patrolled by goons decked out in black armored outfits that would make Kristi Noem swoon. The wrestling match between Charles and Orlando looks like something out of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” There is even an unmotivated and totally pointless assassination of the Duke’s attendant Le Beau (Jeff Lillico).

The same dark vision extends to the Duchess’ exile in the Forest of Arden, which becomes a grim and heavily armed partisan encampment instead of the sylvan paradise I believe it should be. Yes, yes, the uses of adversity and all that, but the Duchess, in an upbeat speech, seems to embrace winter in the woods as character-building fun, much like those Canadian winters.

Then the love besotted Orlando starts posting bad poetry on the forest trees about his love for Rosalind and the mood changes. Suddenly, it is not only Spring but Act Two in a bucolic countryside that looks a lot like an idealized rural England. It’s a somewhat jarring transition but at least we are back in Shakespeare country!

Now it’s time to amp up our willing suspension of disbelief. Rosalind has disguised herself as a man, one Ganymede, while Celia has become Aliena, a peasant girl. Yet somehow, when they meet, Orlando cannot see through these thin disguises. Even when Rosalind eventually meets her mother, the Duchess finds her only vaguely familiar.

But who cares? Act Two is the heart of As You Like It and it happily contains some of the best scenes and best performances in the show.

Michael Man, late of the Shaw Festival, is splendid as the shepherd Silvius and his mastery of Shakespeare’s verse is flawless. As the heartless Phoebe, the object of his desires, Jessica B. Hill is comic quicksilver. Silvae Mercedes in her Stratford debut makes a deliciously slutty and uninhibited Audrey who hooks up with Touchstone.

The scenes in which Rosalind, as Ganymede, feigns to cure Orlando of his love by having him pretend that she/he is Rosalind are also great fun.

Two actors face particular challenges since their characters make far more sense in Shakespeare’s early modern work than they do in Abraham’s more recent dystopia.

Touchstone is a “motley fool,” something of a stock character in plays of the period, but without parallel in Stalinist Russia. Still Steve Ross makes the best of it and achieves something akin to apotheosis when he defends his claim to Audrey against her former beau William (a buff Leon Qin).

Jacques (Aaron Krohn), a melancholic courtier at the Duchess’ court, who has the famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech, is another character that has no parallel in the updated world of Abraham’s As You Like It.

Melancholy, or depression, held a special fascination for early modern England and it was fashionable to feign melancholy since melancholics were considered to possess a certain wisdom. The closest we have to it today is teenage goths, which is hardly the same thing.

Krohn, who is decked out like a character in an especially hip Western film, carries it of well. He delivers the famous speech as if it has sprung extempore from his mother wit rather than as the well-rehearsed set piece we usually get in As You Like It.

Of the principals, Farb stands out as Rosalind, which is no surprise given her track record with Shakespeare at Stratford. She knows how to project and fill that large house and still sound conversational. She also captures both Rosalind’s girlish infatuation and her mature-beyond-her-years wisdom about love and its discontents.

Newcomers Allen and Simamba are appealing performers, but both are given to shouting and awkward moments. There was a time at Stratford when performers would serve a suitably long apprenticeship before being entrusted with such major roles.

There is a fair amount of singing in As You Like It, including songs lifted from other plays. Here the music is provided by Ron Sexsmith and Thomas Ryder Payne (who also did the thankfully unobtrusive sound design) and sung for the most part very sweetly by Gabriel Antonacci.

At one point, Antonacci is joined in harmony by Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane, who was a luminous Portia in Something Rotten! She sings beautifully but is totally wasted in the ensemble. I couldn’t help thinking “Why isn’t she playing Celia?”

Julie Fox has designed terrific scenery that is especially effective in the Duchess’ forest encampment. She has also done a good job with a wide range of costumes, from the furred accouterments of faux-Stalinist peasants, to the cartoonish SWAT team uniforms of Duke Fredrick’s enforcers, to the rustic garb of the shepherds and gardeners of the Forest of Arden.

I did take issue with the “wedding dress” Rosalind wears in the final scene, which appeared to have been created from one of those large blue bags you get at IKEA. I get it. It’s the Forest of Arden and you have to make do. But c’mon Chris, it’s a fantasy!

This is the third As You Like It I’ve seen at Stratford. Des MacAnuff’s surrealist take of 2010 and Jillian Keiley’s Newfie house party version of 2016 both fell short of bringing out the soul of Shakespeare’s play.

Despite my quibbles, Chris Abraham’s version is the best of the bunch and well worth seeing.

As You Like It continues at the Festival Theatre through October 24, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Stratford Festival website.

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