'Like It' or Not
A famed comedy, with and without errors
By Don Shirley
Two of the bigger outdoor theaters offer As You Like It this summer. As I like it: Ellen Geer’s staging of Shakespeare’s comedy at Theatricum Botanicum. As I like it not: Kevin P. Kern’s version for the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company.
I was surprised by how much I liked the Theatricum production. I saw three renditions of the play in 2006 (Cornerstone Theater, Independent Shakespeare, and A Noise Within). Although all were excellent, in different ways, I was ready to suspend all trips to the Forest of Arden for another five years. Yet in 2008, the same play is concurrently at two venues in L.A.’s northwest expanses – far enough away from those 2006 productions, geographically, that the audience base is almost completely different.
As I watched the Kingsmen edition, on the campus of Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks, I was so unengaged that I wondered why I was there.
Some of the problems are endemic to the Kingsmen’s general layout, with no fixed seating. Most spectators bring their own chairs and blankets. For $75, a group of up to six people can buy a “box” – a marked-off spot on the lawn near the stage. Not surprisingly, most theatergoers instead select $15 admission to the terrain behind the optimistically large “box” area. Whenever I’ve been there, a grassy gap separates the people in the “boxes” from the masses, dissipating the energy coming from the stage. The actors aren’t allowed to invade that space. They seem distant.
No walls define the sides of the amphitheater, and other campus events sometimes distract. During the first act last Friday, a group of maybe 50 people – who had nothing to do with the production – sauntered past the amphitheater on the audience’s left, talking among themselves. They returned during the second act, going in the opposite direction, seemingly oblivious to the noise they made. More quaintly, the croaking of frogs from a creek also competes with the electronic sound system.
The production is supposedly set in the ’70s, but many of the songs and costumes are late-’60s-ish. Dressing melancholy Jaques (Eric Zivot) as a troubled Vietnam vet was a creative touch, and the play’s wrestling match was one of the most brutal I’ve seen, with the help of a couple of beanbag chairs wielded as weapons. But generally the ensemble looks drab and anonymous. Brief visual impersonations of ’70s political figures feel strained. A big unit set takes up too much of the stage, nearly erasing the play’s distinctions between court and countryside.
Meanwhile, in Topanga, the Theatricum Botanicum also has permanent set pieces, but they’re tucked against the sides of the stage, allowing much more wide-open space in which to draw those distinctions between locales. The Theatricum is in a natural valley, with hills on three sides and a wall on the fourth (although motorcycle and airplane noise occasionally intrude). The hills and the aisles are creatively used throughout the production. Rows of permanent seating are sharply raked, so that everyone has close and unobstructed views.
The Theatricum’s edition is set in 19th century America – again, indicated primarily by songs and costumes. The motley fool Touchstone looks and talks like a Shakespeare-quoting dandy from Mark Twain. Women play the traditionally male roles of Jaques and Adam, but Geer rejects any topical political gestures. The blithe mingling of blacks and whites in this Reconstruction-era forest is ignored as effortlessly as the plot’s many improbabilities.
Instead, the era is used simply to point out the expansive universality of Shakespeare’s themes and language. As I sat in a dappled glen on a perfect Sunday afternoon, watching Willow Geer’s Rosalind and Mike Peebler’s Orlando, I was again reminded of just why this play is staged so often.
As You Like It, Theatricum Botanicum, Topanga. Sunday afternoons only. (310) 455-3723. theatricum.com. Closes Sept. 28.
As You Like It, Kingsmen Park, Cal Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks. (805) 493-3455. kingsmenshakespeare.org. Closes July 13.
Published: 07/02/2008
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