I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page,
And therefore, look you, call me Ganymede.
The words are fairly simple. Rosalind has been banished by her wicked uncle, the usurping Duke Fredrick, and decides, along with her cousin-by-family (but sister in love) Celia, to venture out of the harsh environs of the court and seek their fortunes in the forest of Arden. Along the way, to bypass the treacheries of potential assailants, Rosalind will disguise herself as a young man, named after Zeus's messenger (a figure in which Elizabethan audiences would have heard homoerotic connotations, especially when spoken by a boy-actor playing the female Rosalind). Thus, when Celia asks "What shall I call thee when thou art a man?", Rosalind retorts with the unrhyming couplet: "I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page, / And therefore, look you, call me Ganymede" [pronounced: GAN-uh-mead]. Pinpointing exactly why this statement is so incredible and moving is as wily and mercurial as Rosalind herself, but its glory has something to do with being present at the birth of a heroine. At the beginning of As You Like It, Celia speaks much more than her more-famous cousin (Celia is, after all, the current princess, due to her father's usurpation), a balance which shifts as the play goes on, as Rosalind invents her persona as a young adult in a turbulent world. Rosalind is the most scintillatingly neurotic of Shakespeare's women characters, and somehow these two lines give us an origin story for an adventurer we didn't know we needed until the thought emerged, Athena-like, out of Rosalind's psyche. "I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page. And therefore look you call me Ganymede."
In the presence of such a glowing intellect, we the audience are only too happy to oblige.
I realize this is a long way round. But unpacking the unique pleasures of As You Like It as a text and dramatic blueprint is key to understanding why Tarah Flanagan's production at the Great River Shakespeare Festival is such a success. Fundamentally, As You Like It is a hang-out play: productions live or die with how much you do (or don't) have fun spending time in the drama's cosmos with the cast of characters Shakespeare has assembled. The plot is fluid and more emotionally grounded than tied to the jackhammer of narrative (a nail biter it ain't). Flanagan manages to honor the play's grimness while keeping the action sparkling and genial. Despite its lack of plot-based tension, As You Like It is somehow just so pleasant to be around that stepping into its universe is like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket: the experience calls for sensation, not suspense.
Flanagan starts off on the best foot possible, whereby we simply love watching Rosalind (Ashley Bowen) and Celia (Elian Rowe) spend time together. As performers, these two actors combined are greater than the sum of their parts: their focus is totally on investing in each other and their sisterly connection, and as such the framework for As You Like It has the ideal ground from which to spring. While GRSF sometimes goes too far with its trademark house-style of speaking Shakespeare's language with anxious vehemence, as if each actor is terrified on a line-by-line basis of not being comprehended by their Winona County counterparts in the audience, Bowen uses the emphatic delivery to place Rosalind's language in the listener's lap, mixed-metaphorically speaking. Thus, you get more than your money's worth. Spending time inside the genius of Rosalind is worth any price of admission, and Flanagan's production allows you to luxuriate in it with Bowen as a more-than-capable vessel. Perhaps it's unfair that I fixate here on the release of Rosalind as a spiritual entity, rather than as the revelation of an individual performer's particular stamp of interpretation, but such is the overwhelming sense one leaves this production with: you feel like you've been gifted time in the play's presence, more than you feel like you've witnessed a grand renovation of a classic text.
Some other features worth mentioning: the wrestling match between Orlando (Chauncy Thomas) and Charles (Christopher Gerson) is hilarious, using live slo-mo fisticuffs to delightful effect (fight choreography by Benjamin Boucvalt). Gerson also does commendable double-duty as Jaques, delivering his infamous "All the world's a stage" monologue with intimacy and spontaneity (no one really knows what to do with that speech or why exactly it's in this play in particular, so any heartfelt stab is appreciated). Thomas brings intelligence and charm to Orlando, who's a bit like Romeo if the Montagues were more of a salt-of-the-earth variety. Act II, Scene VII, when Orlando brings his elderly servant Adam (Michael Fitzpatrick) to a rustic friendsgiving sponsored by the banished Duke Senior (De'Onna Prince) and an autumnal ballad is sung during the breaking of bread by Amiens (Duncan McIntyre), is as sparse and elegiac as you could hope for and I know I couldn't contain my tears.
The demerits come from sins you'd hardly dub cardinal: Prince's Duke Senior is unlikely to inspire camaraderie outside the play's confines, especially when his scenes are staged with Amiens as his only functional attendant. Gerson is a charismatic and uniquely sunny Jaques, though leaves the character's darker implications unmined. (The back pages of Jaqeus can flummox even the toughest Bardolater: he's a traveller? he's been a libertine? marriage makes him anxious? what a weirdo.) Phebe and Silvius (Alegra Batara and Adeyinka Adebola) are fun enough, though hardly solve the problems of the play's queasiest couple (if left not seriously revamped). And this is hardly the first production of As You Like It I've seen where simply by virtue of the way Shakespeare asks us to listen to this particular rustic yet demanding idiolect, by the time Oliver re-enters as a changed man to tell his lioness-attack saga, I simply feel like I've heard everything I can hear and find myself on an auditory level (to borrow a phrase from food overindulgence) stuffed. Luckily, William Sturdivant is as beguiling an Oliver as you'll ever meet, and the rare performer who improves in the character as the night goes on, without feeling like he's better suited to just the villain or just the reformed lover.
Senior and her "country copulatives" also suffer from a real visual oddity in costume designer John Merritt's pallette: their clothes are simply too garish, as if the focus outside of the harshness of Fredrick's court was somehow being amended by the Arden residents wearing bright and elegant plumage. The fact that Duke Senior appears in purple garb with peacock-like feathers doesn't help us take the character, or her role in this makeshift society, seriously. However, the black-and-white coloring of the court garb under Fredrick's regime rings true to the play's crueler beginnings. The fact that so many productions of As You Like It in recent memory highlight the play's initial harshness, and view the story as moving from winter into the blossoming of springtime, shows that just because you have, say, 10 different directors, that doesn't really mean that 10 different functional interpretations of a given play exist. An epoch defines a play more than any individual artist. Kimberley Sykes' 2019 production at the Royal Shakespeare Company emphasized the deconstructed theatricality of the play, which got more wondrous as the story went on. Polly Findlay at the National Theatre in 2016 used the automated elements of Fredrick's court to juxtapose with the greater (though colder) freedoms of Arden. And really such a strain can be seen going all the way back to John Hirsch's 1983 production at the Stratford Festival, which began with a child begging for food while singing "it was a lover and his lass" in the midst of a brutal wintry mix. Clearly our current era has the items it values in As You Like It; the collective consciousness seeks the elements that are germane to its own time. Cosmetic changes may occur, but directorial or performative influence always takes a backseat to the priorities of an artist's larger social context.
The pleasures of As You Like It are a balm and a respite. "True is it that we have seen better days," says Duke Senior to Orlando. As the audience, we both agree, and somehow feel Senior and his merry band were with us in those days. As You Like It plays on the fantasy that the suffering of our lives produces restorative meaning, and any production that can make the comedy's spirit sing is worthy of praise and love. I don't know that any play of Shakespeare's so completely wipes the adult brain of the fear that your best days are both behind you and also badly spent. Flanagan weaves her thread in such a way that one feels like they've been presented with a warm-hearted tapestry full of wisdom and good will, combating the darkness of the world with a forest that can heal and unify.
If it's good enough for Rosalind, it's good enough for you.
