Theater review
“As You Like It”
Grade: B-
8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 2 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. $16-$40. Georgia Shakespeare, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-504-1473. gashakespeare.org
Verdict: Safe and solid.
Georgia Shakespeare is in the midst of transformation. It’s been experimenting with programming, tweaking its messaging, beautifying its grounds and, apparently, getting back to the essence of what it means to be a classical theater company in the 21st century.
In other words: How does it stay relevant to distracted and dwindling audiences?
Pushed into a financial corner, last summer it scrapped its time-honored summer repertory season and — gasp — focused on Ovid instead of the Bard. Apparently, regular patrons missed the Shakespeare and, perhaps, the excitement of watching a company of actors step in and out of a variety of roles: a feat that requires fancy footwork — and brain power.
So what’s up now?
The theater opened its season earlier this month with a new production of “As You Like It,” staged first at Piedmont Park, now at its Oglethorpe University home base. (It will follow up with “The Frog Prince,” a family musical performed by the intern company, and “One Man, Two Guvnors,” Richard Bean’s ’60s makeover of Goldoni’s “A Servant of Two Masters.”)
As staged by artistic director Richard Garner, “As You Like It” is a solid, safely acted and nicely designed endeavor of Shakespeare’s great comedy about loss, crisscrossed love and redemption.
It will probably make Georgia Shakespeare’s old guard happy and comfortable again. I missed the Shakespeare in the Park treatment, so I can’t say how it looked. In terms of reaching new audiences, let’s hope the journey of Rosalind (Courtney Patterson) and Orlando (Travis Smith) felt more magical in the Arden of Piedmont than it does indoors at Oglethorpe, where I found it to be slightly uneven, a tad too long and a bit of a snooze.
At its best, “As You Like It” is a deliciously silly romp — with some very choice parts, memorable speeches (“All the world’s a stage…”) and clowning. But Patterson, one of the finest comedians in town, disappoints here. Rosalind is a quick-witted young woman in exile who disguises herself as the shepherd Ganymede, toys with the man she loves and becomes the object of the base affections of the shepherdess Phebe.
That’s plenty of peril. But Patterson’s rationale almost seems to be: Since we are all in on the joke, why bother? She appears to play down her own shenanigans so as not to upstage others. Indeed, the hapless romance of the earthy Phebe (Ann Marie Gideon) and the sweetly doofus Silvius (Justin Walker) is more entertaining.
As Touchstone, Allan Edwards has some funny moments but feels rather reserved overall. Smith plays Orlando rather tenderly, while Joe Knezevich is good as Orlando’s vicious bullying older brother, Oliver, who falls for Celia (the promising Molly Coyne). Chris Kayser is wonderful as the melancholy, contemplative Jaques; Neal A. Ghant quite commanding as Duke Senior.
Kat Conley’s set design is remarkably efficient. Duke Frederick’s court looks almost like a contemporary war monument — angular gray panels that fold down to reveal the trees of Arden, which sport a magic of their own. Sydney Roberts’ beautifully structured, mostly black-and-white costumes are from a period all their own — golden-age Hollywood meets the Jetsons for the ladies; long, handsome, cleverly cut coats for the men. Beautiful work.
So is it possible for a company to be so polished that it loses the sense of spontaneity and bedlam that defines great comedy? Apparently so. I’m impressed by this ensemble’s familiarity and fluency with the 400-year-old text, the way the performers imbue the language with naturalness and contemporaneity. Just wish they were funnier.
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