As You Like It: romping through a sensual garden of Shakespeare
12 Aug 2022

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Dahlia Katz

he hath strange places crammed. With observation, the which he vents. In mangled forms. Oh, that I were a fool!
- As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

The production of As You Like It now playing at the High Park Ampitheatre takes the audience to many strange places, gleefully mangling forms, and creating a magical comic romp. It begins with actors, clad in beige muslin, gathering on a stage festooned with brightly-coloured and sensual floral plants. As the play proceeds, the surrounding greenery of High Park creeps onto the stage and fills it with a lush ecosystem of its own. The actors are likewise transformed, multiple times for most, into sexually charged stamen-topped plants, animals of all sorts, and fashionistas from how Jean Paul Gaultier would dress Greta Thunberg for a strut down a runway. The design and costumes are by Shadowland Theatre (The Cold War) and they perfectly encapsulate the conceptual design of this production. And are enough reason to experience this As You Like It, even for people intimidated by Shakespeare but seduced by stagecraft and spectacle.

For once the segue from the land acknowledgement to the play itself is utterly seamless. This version of As You Like It is all about the utopian splendour of the Forest of Arden. The class boundaries that set the play in motion collapse, sharing resources replaces threats of violence (and wrestling), and love, with the randy promise of lust fulfilled, blossoms. Even the animals are in balance and curious about these humanoids running around—there is a lot of running—spouting iambic pentameter. Even the two dangerous animals, a neon snake refugee from Beetlejuice and a glittery cardboard lioness, are only threatening to the humanoid villains. It is all idyllic except for the complications of achieving, and consummating, love. The plot is notoriously slender and the real meat of As You Like It is the comic riffs and satirical jabs that Shakespeare packs the play with. 

Shakespearean prose is often perceived as obtuse or dated and difficult, especially on a warm summer night under the stars. Director Anand Rajaram (Buffoon, Mustard, Stupefaction) is determined to entertain and takes a kitchen sink approach. Clowning and slapstick rule the night, with Shakespeare's immortal words delivered in accents and funny voices honouring Mel Blanc. Ad-libbing and winking through the fourth wall are borrowed from the pantomime traditions with Eric Woolfe and Ken Hall being the prime practitioners. Woolfe, borrowing shamelessly from the Marx Brothers, plays the horny Touchstone who is a literal officially designated fool, and Hall almost pulls off the one style I wish Rajaram had jettisoned: audience participation. The bit with a youth called upon to play the court messenger was cute, but the audience warm-up was cliché and annoying. Otherwise Hall is hilarious as a scampering, pampered Duke with an inflated ego but a big heart. And a portable soapbox.

Not that Shakespeare's prose is ignored. Paolo Santaluca (Orphans for the Czar, Four Chords and a Gun, Bed and Breakfast, La Bete, Animal Farm, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Mustard, The Taming of the Shrew) and Bren Eastcott are the central lovers and handle the prose with aplomb. Though that skill doesn't get the same enthusiastic reaction as does Santaluca's WWE-inspired physical comedy. Shawn DeSouza-Coelho (I Cook, He Does the Dishes) and Astrid Atherly are the other points of the symmetrical love quadrangle, but they get to shtick a little more with Atherly displaying a stunningly beautiful falsetto. Because yes, this As You Like It also helps itself to musical theatre, albeit a folky mutation. Belinda Corpuz narrates with some lilting melodies and the entire cast harmonizes on a rousing opening number and an, alas, limp closing number. But Shakespeare will not be denied. Maja Ardal seats herself on the lip of the stage, spot lit for an 11 o'clock number ,and fills the ampitheatre with one of Shakespeare's most well worn soliloquies.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts

The rest of the cast has joined the audience on the grass and sits rapt as Ramajam and Shakespeare's vision snaps into place. And an audience that has been enjoying the comedy and spectacle gets to experience the emotional power of theatre history stripped to the bones and presented in the plummy gorgeous manner of the classics, without the pretense of parody. And then As You Like It gallops on. The action and visuals are so compelling and quickly paced that the gender confusion of Rosalind and its attendant satire (or misogyny) barely registers. Great clowns are genderless, guided only by enthusiasm and curiosity. The energetic troupe takes clowning and Shakespeare seriously, gleefully swapping genders, identities, styles, and even species, to illustrate the words, the themes, and the big brash wonder of falling in love. When Orlando, in crisis, questions "What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?" we feel for his dilemma but have no real concern: this production is weightless, effervescent, and tongues are unleashed to frolic through a Forest of Arden in the heart of High Park.