As You Like It

MY BUDDY VALENTINE Arnold and Parks read a dubious note.

Photo: Steve Leonard

In As You Like It, Shakespeare can be fairly accused of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. The Forest of Arden, where much of the play is set, hosts so many tossed-together elements of the playwright’s other comedies that later critics from Shaw to Tolstoy have written the play off as a crowd-pleaser. With its multiple romances, intrigues, subplots and a great deal of philosophizing by its numerous inhabitants, it can be a challenge to make it a cohesive whole.

Brown’s production does a number of smart things. By excising a large number of ancillary characters (including a literal deus ex machina, the goddess of marriage), Brown tightens the play’s focus; more to the point is his central conceit of presenting the cast in modern dress (clever work by costume designer Rachel Anne Healy) and the characters as contemporary refugees, their new society in Arden always on the lookout for the nefarious Duke Frederick’s search copters.

The director also has a top-notch cast at his disposal (many of the younger actors are new to Writers’ but have a long association with Brown). The established powers of Larry Yando as Jaques and Ross Lehman as Touchstone have a strong competitor in the grand scene larceny category in newcomer Eric Parks, as scorned goofball Silvius. But it’s the central characters, Marcus Truschinski’s Orlando and Tracy Michelle Arnold’s Rosalind, who seal the deal. Along with sound designer Andrew Hansen’s original and often-performed-live music, they remind us that all the world’s a stage, and most of us merely lucky to be in the audience.