This little experiment has Seattle’s Taproot Theatre tapping into the root of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” as you’re used to, but with a rather startling change in setting.
Imagine; Taproot director Karen Lund relocates the whole kit and caboodle from 16th century France to 1960s U.S.A., from the French royal court and Arden Forest to Johnson-era D.C. and California’s Redwood Forest – from the White House Rose Garden to a hippie commune in the woods.
So why? What are the parallels?
How about both places are centers of political scandal and back-to-nature reactions to political scandal?
So what? What’s Lund getting at and why bother?
Well, you can turn on CNN for the latest in campaign shenanigans and debate discouraging the Green Movement. Or you can sit back, watch and have a rollicking good time with a first-class mind’s way of putting serious matters into perspective. Both focus on haves ousting have-nots. The difference is Shakespeare’s sense of comedy, people, language, romance, excitement and fun. None of which Lund, et al, neglect.
Star-crossed lovers Rosalind and Orlando (Marianne Savell and Aaron Lamb) inspire you to swoon, suffer, sigh and laugh at what they go through after being banished into exile.
Not even the most depressed teenager could wring half the self-pity out of the “seven ages of man” that the melancholy Jaques manages (Don Brady). A gloomier Gus, you’ll never find. Brady’s a hoot.
The facial and physical contortions Bob Borwick puts into Touchstone’s tongue-twisting explanation of degrees of insult swapping between gentleman courtiers stops the show. It has to, to give you time to catch your breath. Bravo, Borwick.
Hippies of every stripe personify the transcendentalism of Whitman, Thoreau and peace-and-freedom firebrand, Abbie Hoffman. 60s folk rock infuses idyllic life in the woodlands. Constancy in love is touted and winked at. Disguises figure in. Plot lines twist and turn like a Porsche in the Swiss Alps. Shakespeare’s language is gorgeous but oftentimes packed tight. Listening is key.
This is “As You Like It” with Shakespeare internalized, personalized and made public by a lady who dreamed about doing it her way for more than 20 years.
The lady’s hope for her effort is that it will help us all to better relate to the characters involved, “…the societal woes they are experiencing, the disenchantment with their heads of state and the hope that they find in a return to simplicity,” according to the director’s notes.
Hope realized as far as I am concerned, Ms. Lund.
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at grayghost7@comcast.net or entopinion@ heraldnet.com.
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