American Players Theatre's comedy 'As You Like It' makes every word count

Late in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” Rosalind’s sidekick asks Oliver whether he is indeed the evil and rascally man who tried to kill his younger brother.

“‘Twas I, but ‘tis not I,” Nate Burger’s Oliver responds to Celia, in the spirited and broadly comic American Players Theatre production of “As You Like It” that opened Saturday night in Spring Green.  “I do not shame to tell you what I was, since my conversion so sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.”  By play’s end, the two are married.

Although I’ve seen “As You Like It” many times – the APT production is my third in the past two years alone – I’ve never paid much attention to either those lines or the minor character who utters them.

But I’ve never previously seen an “As You Like It” directed by James Bohnen, who pays as close attention to Shakespeare’s actual words – and, by extension, even its most easily overlooked characters – as any director I know.

That includes Oliver, whose words here could serve as an epigraph for this marvelous play.  As its title suggests and as the conversions of Oliver and so many other characters confirm, “As You Like It” holds forth the prospect that we can be whomever we choose – especially when love inspires us to choose boldly.

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I can’t recall an “As You like It” in which oft-overlooked characters play so boldly and accessibly – from Tim Gittings’ wise and aging shepherd and John Pribyl’s faithful old servant to young lovers like Phoebe (Kelsey Brennan) and Silvius (Eric Schabla).

There are also noteworthy performances from Marcus Truschinski as the hilariously foppish, show-stealing Touchstone, Tracy Michelle Arnold as the saturnine Jaques and Andrea San Miguel as a vibrant and wide-eyed Celia.

And speaking of bold: This production’s magic unfolds on a nearly bare set, dressed with a few props but otherwise daring the audience to miss what it doesn’t really need – not when the poetry is this good and conveyed with such intelligence.

This isn’t “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the delightful APT hit from 2017 in which the poetry is channeled through a fun but tortured plot.  In the comparatively plotless “As You Like It,” the sparkling dialogue is the thing, with which to catch the conscience of both characters and audience.

Bohnen’s cast ensures we hear it all – not just the words but also the unbounded joy and the accompanying humor.  Even with Arnold’s melancholy Jaques brooding in the wings, this is an “As You Like It” filled with gags, nearly all of them driven by words rather than props.  It’s broad, but rarely at the cost of the play’s texture and nuance.

The lone exception – and it’s significant – involves the central relationship between Rosalind (Melisa Pereyra) and Orlando (Chris Klopatek).  As Rosalind, Pereyra is too emphatic and pushes too hard for a character who should register as not only madly in love but also thoughtful and wary regarding love’s limitations.  Pereyra nails the passion.  But she’s not much for reflection. 

Hence it’s a stretch to imagine this particular Rosalind – a bit too young, much too sure, and insufficiently self-conscious – as a woman who might pause to reflect that while men have died and worms have eaten them, no man has died for love.

More problematic still, such a clearly smitten Rosalind can’t credibly disguise herself and her passion long enough to school a callow Orlando into a more mature view of how love works. In Pereyra’s hands, Rosalind’s love is always obvious; Orlando therefore necessarily knows that the ostensible boy teaching him how to love is really Rosalind in disguise.

That approach is good for a few laughs, but it raises the question of why Orlando continues to play along for so long after the jig is up. It makes this couple’s flirting much less clever and risky. And it leaves Klopatek with little opportunity to grow into something better; his Orlando therefore presents as relatively flat.

Little else in this production is. Saturday’s opening night audience clearly loved it all; most important, it was clear they understood it – sans set, sans frills, sans everything but the language. It was delivered with an exuberance and verve that capture the joy of falling in love and being alive as few other plays do – by Shakespeare or anyone else.

APT performs “As You Like It” through Oct. 7 in Spring Green.

PROGRAM NOTES 

Masquerade: Bohnen has set his “As You Like It” in 1870; it begins with a game of masquerade in the court of the usurping and evil Duke Frederick (Brian Mani). The players – Rosalind, Celia and Touchstone – are all attuned to the possibility of being other than they seem. In different ways, all three will upend the stuffy Victorian world they inhabit. It’s a smart and wonderful opening.

Winter: Taking the stage on one of the hottest nights we’ve had this year in Wisconsin, the courtiers in Arden’s forest were dressed for winter, reflecting the recognition by an exiled Duke Senior (an avuncular David Daniel) that his forest idyll can’t exile the “icy fang” of “the winter’s wind.” It’s among the few times Bohnen’s upbeat production acknowledges that death even stalks Arcadia; we’re a far cry from APT’s much darker 2010 production of “As You like It,” set in the Great Depression. Faithful old Adam died and was buried in that production; this “As You Like It” is much too bright and sunny for that.  In this “As You Like It,” Pribyl’s Adam can seem nearly as “lusty” as he’d initially promised, as he cavorts alongside everyone else during the concluding wedding festivities.

Tracy Michelle Arnold: As the melancholy Jaques – a part historically assigned to a man – Arnold does her best to balance things out, giving a performance recalling the many smart and lonely women she’s played who’ve been bruised by life and lived to tell the tale. Much as she did when playing the wrathful Queen Margaret in APT’s 2012 production of “Richard III” – a performance I am quite sure I will never forget – Arnold’s Jaques sometimes hovers on the edge of the action, watching with a slightly amused and world-weary smile even when she doesn’t speak. 

Unlike Arnold’s raging Margaret, her contemplative Jaques is content to watch. As James Shapiro notes in his wonderful book “1599,” Jaques has a significant presence in the play but no effect on it; a memorable satirist, Jaques “nonetheless finds himself trumped at every turn.” That’s how Arnold plays it; in a setting where her character is out of step with the norm and where so many characters around her are amped up, she stays within herself. Easier said than done, from a masterful actor giving another fine performance.

Music: “As You Like It” is among the most musical of the comedies, and this production honors that facet of the play, primarily thanks to the voice of Cher Desiree Álvarez, accompanied on guitar by various foresters.

Susan Sweeney: Finally, a shout-out to Susan Sweeney, a legendary voice and text coach whose work in that capacity on this play is among the reasons Bohnen’s cast makes Shakespeare’s language so clear and accessible.  No mics.  No nonsense.  Just smart line reads coupled with plain, old-fashioned articulation and projection, filling an amphitheater of more than 1,100 seats.  There’s simply nothing quite like it, anywhere in America.  Artists like Sweeney make it possible.