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P/CLOUDY Temp: 66 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Thursday, August 29, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Cyberchef E The People Golf Job Network Headbone Zone Wellness Connection Movie Times Newspaper in Education Oregon CarZone Outdoor Journal Personals Prime Times Real Estate Tempo A & E TV Times W3 Magazine CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Destinations Automotive Communities Employment Entertainment Publications Real Estate Recreation Shopping Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Jobs @ Mail Tribune Email Story to a Friend June 25, 2002 Touchstone, played by Dan Donohue, gives Audrey (Alecia Mandelkow) a spin in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival�s production of �As You Like It.� Click the photo to see a larger (27k) version; use your Back button to return to the story. Photo by David Cooper Review You gotta love OSF’s buoyant ‘As You Like It’ American West theme gives Deidrie Henry all the space she needs for an expansive, funny depiction of infatuated youth By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune Rosalind in "As You Like It" is one of the great characters in Shakespeare, so her presence in the play lends an opening the aura of a championship fight. What kind of Rosalind will show up? Deidrie Henry Sunday night delivered a knockout. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Shakespeare’s most love-struck play, directed by Penny Metropulos, was the third play of the weekend to open on the OSF’s Elizabethan stage. While it may not be one for the ages, it is very funny and easily the most audience-friendly outdoor play of the season. It is set in the American West, not the Old West of the frontier, but Teddy Roosevelt’s West, maybe. There are overalls and straw and baa-ing. Metropulos wisely avoided a cowboy motif, which would have set up a conflict between the Elizabethans’ pastoral myth (the forest of Arden) and the predominant American myth. For this nonspecific West, Deborah Dryden designed costumes suggesting hunters, Australian drovers, early motorists. Scenic designer Michael Ganio’s stage is ruled by a plain barn wood background that depends on Bob Peterson’s nuanced lights for changes. George Bernard Shaw said that we love Rosalind because she goes after her man rather than saying no three times, as well-bred young women were expected to do, and Henry is irresistible as she goes after Orlando (Kevin Kenerly). When the beautiful Rosalind, disguised as the young man Ganymede, flirts with Orlando, the stage heats up in their chemistry and we fall in love with young love all over again. There are thorns as well as roses in Arden. Even as we bask in the growing eros of Henry and Kenerly, the performances of Dan Donohue as Touchstone, the fool, and Richard Howard as the melancholy Jaques undermine the perspective we need to get Shakespeare’s message, which is that all you need is love. Now, Jaques is disgusted, Touchstone just amused. And Donohue is wonderfully funny as Touchstone. In a physical portrayal, he creates a fool so funny that it’s easy to forget he embodies a weak kind of love that falls short of the play’s ideal. If there’s a character so vibrant she’s almost bigger than the play, it’s supposed to be Rosalind. Jaques says he can suck the melancholy out of a song to feed on it, like a weasel sucking an egg. But Howard’s Jaques is a bit flip, almost as if he’s reached a philosophical accommodation with his world-weariness. A parody of the intellectual poseur of the day, Jaques has cut himself off from the zest for life that Rosalind (and to a lesser extent, Orlando) embodies. He’s not a villain, but softening his edge undercuts the contrast between his cynicism and the Arden spirit of love. That said, his "All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players" speech was a fine moment. Arden is some forest, with trees, a desert, sheep, shepherds, lions, snakes, a palm tree. People here magically shake off the avarice of court life and might even find love. There is little plot to speak of, just people contrasting with each other in a series of delightful vignettes. Rosalind and Orlando are outcasts from the court of Duke Frederick (David Kelly), who has usurped the throne of his brother, Duke Senior (also played by David Kelly), Rosalind’s father. Orlando’s father was a faithful follower of the old duke. Accompanied by Touchstone, Rosalind and her cousin Celia (Vilma Silva) flee to Arden, where Celia’s father and his followers are living like Robin Hood in the golden days. Orlando comes here seeking refuge, accompanied by Adda (Dee Maaske, in a part usually played by a man as Adam). In this pastoral, it’s to the characters we look for meaning. They fall on a continuum of what it takes to be fully human (reminder: All you need is what ?). From alienated to fully engaged, the list goes: Jaques, Touchstone, Orlando, Rosalind. Jaques is bitter and pessimistic. Touchstone detached but amused. Orlando clueless but love-struck. Only Rosalind is fully willing and able to immerse herself in the messy human comedy of life and love. She also has the power to move others down that road, and Henry has the magnetism to make us believe it. The action of the play is the movement of the characters in the direction of the human. Metropulos is not afraid to risk (she last year gave us a "Tempest" with a woman Prospero) a West that looks enough like "Oklahoma" that you keep waiting for one of the merry men to break into "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’." And it’s always risky to have young women who disguise themselves as young men wear no disguise but pants, as if inviting us to us to suspend our willing disbelief. Perhaps a wig or mustache on Rosalind-as-Ganymede? It’s risky to mount this much music in a play, even if it is Shakespeare’s most musical work. It seems to work here, with the help of classical pianist Alexander Tutunov on accordion, no less. Despite some shortcomings, this ebullient production, buoyed by the magnetism of Henry and Kenerly, will prove to be much as audiences like it. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S