As You Like It
… or Don’t Like It
New Theatre Strangles the Fun Out of Shakespearean Comedy
By Mary
Damiano
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Elise
Girardin as Rosalind in As You Like It. Sadly, the
tree does not appear in the play. Photo by Eileen Suarez |
For me,
Shakespeare is like broccoli.
This was my
epiphany as I watched New Theatre’s production of As You Like
It. Broccoli feeds the body, Shakespeare feeds the soul.
They’re both good for you. But I don’t like either one.
It’s
blasphemy for me — a writer, theater lover and critic — to say I
don’t like Shakespeare, especially since my favorite movie is
Shakespeare in Love. But while the movie skewers the Bard’s
plot devices as it celebrates his talent, the majority of local
productions of Shakespeare — New Theatre’s included — take
Shakespeare so seriously that they strangle the fun right out of
it.
And
Shakespeare is a lot of work because there’s a translation
process. It’s like in badly subtitled movies, when a character
prattles on endlessly in a foreign language, then the subtitles
come up and you read some overly shortened nonsense like “yes,”
or “no.” Shakespeare wrote in Elizabethan English, which to us
21st century folk is a foreign language. So as I watch the
actors, I find myself translating: Two characters go back and
forth for a few minutes, and afterward I realize, “Oh, he
mistrusts her.” Who wants to do that much work at the theater?
It’s not New
Theatre’s fault. Their production of As You Like It is
perfectly serviceable, meaning it’s the type of production you
get when you have a cast of non-Shakespearean actors. A few
members of the cast understand the meaning behind the words, and
in those moments the production is funny. Most, however, simply
recite the words, and in those long stretches, the production is
tedious.
The themes in
As You Like It are typical of Shakespeare — royalty
behaving badly, mistaken identity, young lovers with crossed
wires, and cross-dressing. (Shakespeare was very fond of
cross-dressing.) Most of the play takes place in the Forest of
Arden, which, in New Theatre’s imagining, looks like a
wood-paneled rumpus room from the 1960s, but without the style.
It’s the
Forest of Arden; would it be too much to ask that there be a few trees or
plants around?
As You Like
It
does have some bright spots. Elise Girardin makes a radiant
Rosalind, and she has real chemistry with Katherine Michelle
Tanner, who plays Celia. Joshua David Robinson steals all of his
scenes as Touchstone, the clever fool. And it’s always a treat
to see Stephen Neal and James Samuel Randolph onstage. But
that’s five bright spots out of a 14-member cast over the course
of two and a half hours. You do the math.
Don’t get me
wrong. Everyone should be exposed to Shakespeare. But you don’t
have to like it.
As You Like
It
runs through Sept. 14 at New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St., Coral
Gables. For tickets and more information, call 305-443-5909 or
visit
www.new-theatre.org.
