The Writers Theatre’s production of a charming folk-pop musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” serves up a comforting dose of communal warmth against the emotional coldness of the current world.
This version of the comedy comes from Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery. Taub, the Tony-winning composer of the suffragette musical “Suffs,” contributed the music and lyrics. Woolery, the director of the civic-minded Public Works program at the Public Theater in New York, co-wrote the book and helmed the original outdoor, large-cast production of this show, which included an enormous array of community members.
To capture the welcoming friendliness that’s inherent in the initial conception, director Braden Abraham infuses the pre-show with a neighborhood feel. In the old-style tavern-like setting — Abraham sets the work in early 20th-century Chicago — incoming audience members can order drinks at the onstage bar and listen to the band performing country-ized, sometimes solemn takes on upbeat pop songs.
It’s ingenious, actually, capturing a vibe that prevails throughout the show, a meditative contentment that’s not unbothered by a complicated world but still happy to be here.
The front man? Matthew Yee, who carries through to play the part of melancholy Jaques, the deliverer of the play’s most famous speech, here turned into an opening and closing song:
“All the world’s a stage
And every day, we play our part
Acting out our heart
Year by year, we grow
Learning as we go….”
The adaptation follows Shakespeare’s plot closely, with sibling rivalries on the one hand — two sets of quarreling brothers — and love stories in many forms on the other. There’s unrequited love, the ridiculous romantic love that produces bad poetry (and here, a purposely corny pop love song), the attraction of opposites and multiple moments of love at first sight. Taub and Woolery swap genders of a couple of the “local” Arden characters as well, which adds several dollops of sexual inclusivity.
The tavern set, standing in for the urban world of the court, gives way to the Forest of Arden, the idyllic natural world where deposed Duke Senior (Paul Oakley Stovall, all stately kindness) has been banished by his now-ruling brother Duke Frederick (Scott Aiello, gangsterized).
Paul Oakley Stovall portrays Duke Senior in the Writer Theatre’s production of “As You Like It.” The tavern set, standing in for the urban world of the court, gives way to the Forest of Arden, the idyllic natural world where the deposedhas been banished by his now-ruling brother Duke Frederick.
Jenn Udoni
Pretty much everyone else follows to Arden, including our heroine Rosalind (Phoebe Gonzalez), in disguise as a man named Ganymede, her bestie cousin Celia (Andrea San Miguel), and Rosalind’s wildly enamored suitor Orlando (Benjamin Mathew).
In one of a few errant choices, Abraham and costume designer Raquel Adorno put Rosalind-Ganymede into focus-pulling Charlie Chaplin garb, which makes us wonder whether Arden might be a literal Halloween party. Fortunately, Gonzalez and Taub had already made us care so deeply about Rosalind with an early song, (“Rosalind be merry/ Rosalind be bright/ Even though your heart is breaking/ Act like you’re all right”) that we can power through the unnecessary self-consciousness of the costume.
Good thing, too, because her scenes with Mathew, in which Orlando agrees to woo Ganymede as if he were Rosalind (which, of course, he is) form the winning core of the show. This adaptation very effectively musicalizes the central plotline, in which Rosalind schools Orlando into a more subdued version of love, one that doesn’t place her on a pedestal but recognizes and loves her imperfections:
“I won’t be the unblemished ideal
You’ve been fooling yourself to believe that I am
I’ll berate you for doubting my powеr
Then seek reassurance that I’m not a sham.”
It’s delightful stuff, light and yet genuinely affecting, and Gonzalez sets up Mathew for his best moment, when he believably professes — in this case, sings — that he’s ready to stop pretending and love “for real.”
The other stories and ensemble numbers have their moments too, not so much for their specifics as for their more generalized expressiveness — emblematizing sophisticated wit (Jackson Evans’ Oscar Wilde-like take on Touchstone), love in general, or, with the song “Under the Greenwood Tree,” a nearly spiritual generosity.
Then there’s Yee’s Jaques, a relatively minor character who becomes an all-important voice here, a type of narrator who reminds us when the show gets too joyful that life can suck too. His sad-sack but spoiled pessimist comes off not as a comically pretentious downer — the usual interpretation — but as a wizened realist, the singer of sad songs as a means of embracing pain as an essential component of a contented life.
He isn’t as funny as other versions of Jaques, but he’s unquestionably more embraceable.
That’s true of the show overall; it sacrifices some of the comedy for sheer likability and a tempered joy that comes through as authentic and meaningful. That turns out to be a sacrifice worth making.