[ssba]
As You Like It
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum
Through September 26
Sometimes staging Shakespeare in a period piece setting adds color and spark. Other times, this sort of stage dressing proves either a distraction and/or irrelevant to the production as a whole.
Both is the case with director Ellen Geer’s current mounting of As You Like It, which is set in mid 19th century America and features the costumes and music of that era.
Geer’s idea is to play upon the division between brothers in Shakespeare’s text and to parallel it with the fracturing of families that was a real and tragic element of the American Civil War. Thus the characters who support the usurper in power, Duke Frederick (Thad Geer) are garbed in blue; those camped out in the Forest in Arden who support his banished brother (Geer again) are in grey.
While it’s an apt concept (it may provoke confusion if your sympathies are totally pro-Union), it doesn’t do much to enhance an appreciation of the comedy. What with the pivotal performances already sodden with shtick, applying another layer of schmaltzy music doesn’t help.
The most visible misfire in the production is Willow Geer’s depiction of Rosalind. The character is one of Shakespeare’s strongest, smartest, wittiest women (so much so that he tacked on an epilogue in which the performer of that role assures the audience that she’s represented as strong, smart, witty because she’s acting in a play – whereas in the real world of course women could never be that).
But Geer’s Rosalind doesn’t appear to embody these virtues. She comes off as a lightweight, flouncy and unsure of herself, with the performer delivering her lines with less than a full measure of conviction – not that she doesn’t know them, merely that she’s not fully invested in their meaning.
Unlike Elizabeth Tobias, well-grounded in her portrayal of Celia, the warm and loving but less overtly luminous of the two cousins, Geer’s at a disconnect from her character. The same holds true of Colin Simon, cast as Orlando, her heartthrob. The performer mugs from start to finish, and scenes between the pair have no sizzle.
The best reason to see the show is to appreciate Gerald C. Rivers’s engaging turn as the wise and amiable Touchstone. You’re guaranteed a smile when he appears, and you’re sorry when he ambles off. The same textured skill is reflected in Leo Knudson as Corin, the aging shepherd; and Ernestine Phillips as Aida, Orlando’s big-hearted servant. Here are three veteran performers who know their stuff – and when it comes right down to it in the theater, that’s all you really need.
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 Topanga Canyon Rd., Topanga; in rep, call for schedule; (310) 455-2322, https://theatricum.secure.force.com/ticket/; through September 26.
