American Players Theater On the Hill’s 3/4 thrust stage backed by trees makes a natural setting in the foreground for Duke Frederick’s Court and later, with a few wagons of small trees upstage, the Forest of Arden. As You Like It’s been updated by director James Bohnen to 1870, but he highlights a current concern, the empowerment of women. Foremost of them is Rosalind. Expressive Melisa Pereyra gets to assume Shakespeare’s longest woman’s role as a radiant, intelligent, charismatic Rosalind. She falls in love at first sight with Orlando (attractive Chris Klopatek) at Duke Frederick’s Court at a fight arranged to get of that uneducated but naturally competent young man. Just as Orlando was ousted due to conflict with his birthrights-usurping brother Oliver, so Rosalind is exiled like her father Duke Senior (nice David Daniel). Frederick (Brian Mani, mean) chides daughter Celia (Andrea San Miguel, loyal and loving) for her friendship with Rosalind. This only prods Celia into leaving with her. Though joined by court jester Touchstone (humorous Marcus Truschinski), a trusty companion, Rosalind decides to pose as a boy, Ganymede, as added protection ostensibly for Celia who’s in the guise of simple lass Aliena. In Arden Forest, nature takes over and Rosalind meets Orlando, longing for her. In disguise she gets him to practice wooing her (as a boy) in preparation to really woo her (as her womanly self). Very funny! Complications get worked out when the power of nature, women’s love, and Marriage God Hyman (on-the-spot John Priby) win out over the ills fostered by a political court and the former ways of Frederick and Oliver. The latter even finds redemptive love from Celia. Comically, Touchstone marries Emily Davis’s whiz of a wench Audrey. Perhaps the only woman who doesn’t take control is Kelsey Brennan’s Phoebe. Though she loses Ganymede, she also really scores with Eric Schabla’s devoted Silvius. The Forest philosopher, melancholy Jaques (Tracy Michelle Arnold, authoritatively assuming a male role that’s the most seriously poetic in the play) leaves to pursue a religious life. As you might guess, Robert Morgan’s costumes play an important part in identification of the characters. Music applied to some fine Shakespearean songs and on its own enhances action and atmosphere, the latter established by fine sound and lighting. In this woman’s hopefully powerful opinion, everything in the ATP production is as you’d like it.
