Loving Shakespeare's language to death is not necessarily a crime. As theatrical sins go, lackluster scene-changes and overlong curtain calls are certainly worse. So saying Laura Rook has in any way "failed" as the director of American Players Theatre's production of As You Like It would be inaccurate, as her biggest pitfall is simply leaving too much room for love.
APT actors who take to directing "up the hill" often produce pace-troubled productions. James DeVita's Hamlet (2022) and David Daniel's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2025) showed deep care and appreciation for Shakespeare's wordsmithery, but did so at the expense of narrative engines. Rook is in the same position, and with a less forgiving text, since the plot of As You Like It is already so aimless. The show needs a firm hand to make the action not feel meandering and tension-less, particularly in acts 3 through 5. Seeing a profoundly skilled ensemble overly relish the riches of this play amidst the most gorgeous natural amphitheater in the U.S. is unlikely to rankle. APT has a history of hiring directors who will let their actors soar rather than approach the text with an auteurist's conception. You just feel the whole evening could sing more if Rook put her foot on the gas at some later dress rehearsal and demanded the ensemble pick up their feet.
In contrast to most recent productions of Shakespeare's most amiable hang, Rook takes the historical setting seriously. This As You Like It begins in a French court much like that of Louis XIII, replete with nuns and bishops and musketeers (costumes by Rachel Anne Healy). Many renditions lean into the play's meta-elements (what with all the world being a stage, and so forth), but this is an As You Like It firmly rooted in social specificity. As its anchor is Samantha Newcomb as Rosalind, who brings sparkling ease and joy to Shakespeare's most scintillating neurotic. Rosalind's wit and verve tends to be the self-justifying reason for her being, rather than discernible personality traits. This gets into a thorny, highly gendered discussion of how Shakespeare created his male vs. female characters, but the women's individualities tend to be harder to pinpoint than the men's. If Macbeth is imaginative, and Lear is passionate, what is Rosalind? "Smart?" In Shakespeare, male characters tend to be defined by tangible qualities, and women by more ethereal descriptors. Hamlet will get described as a "man of genius," whereas Juliet will be "written in light." This may be more a failure of masculine critical discourse than playwriterly creation, but you experience Newcomb's Rosalind more as a linguistic "force" than as a person who is like anybody you know. Though more than any Rosalind I've seen, Newcomb manages to make sense of her decision to dress as a man by making it a reaction to the tyrannical decree of Duke Frederick (Gavin Lawrence): when she speaks of having "a swashing and a martial outside, / As many other mannish cowards have / That do outface it with their semblances," you feel she's taking instruction from her despotic uncle.
Lots of fine acting fills out the cast. Sola Thompson is a terrific foil to Newcomb as Celia. James Ridge makes an endearing and huggable Adam. Rasell Holt is effectively mewling and wimpy as Oliver in his villainous era. One effect of repertory casting is you get great actors in parts they are wildly overqualified for, and so we have the gifts of Triney Sandoval as Le Beau, and Sam Luis Massaro as Charles the Wrestler. Massaro, to his credit, actually makes Charles' thumpy exposition feel like new info is being delivered. And Sandoval unveiling a blood-stained wrestling pad was an elegant scenic touch (set design by Lawrence E. Moten III and Daniel Allen).
Derrick Moore as Orlando stumbles in his characterization. Clearly a strong performer, Moore and Rook have not made sense of a number of important beats in the Orlando trajectory. His initial falling in love with Rosalind at the wrestling match is muddy, his care for Adam's near-starvation is too jokey, which then leads to his desperation in trying to extract food from Duke Senior's merry band not being sufficiently severe. Rook also does Moore no favors by having Orlando's joyous outcry about adorning the forest of Arden with love poems to his Rosalind come immediately after he's experienced the death of Adam, his faithful servant. Adam's death is an extratextual insertion you sometimes have to be reminded is not actually in Shakespeare's play, so often is it added by directors. As presented here, we needed an additional moment of Orlando's grief before we could comfortably transition to his literary enthusiasm, and thus we are led into intermission on an unintentionally sour note.
In contrast to most recent productions of Shakespeare's most amiable hang, Rook takes the historical setting seriously. This As You Like It begins in a French court much like that of Louis XIII, replete with nuns and bishops and musketeers (costumes by Rachel Anne Healy). Many renditions lean into the play's meta-elements (what with all the world being a stage, and so forth), but this is an As You Like It firmly rooted in social specificity. As its anchor is Samantha Newcomb as Rosalind, who brings sparkling ease and joy to Shakespeare's most scintillating neurotic. Rosalind's wit and verve tends to be the self-justifying reason for her being, rather than discernible personality traits. This gets into a thorny, highly gendered discussion of how Shakespeare created his male vs. female characters, but the women's individualities tend to be harder to pinpoint than the men's. If Macbeth is imaginative, and Lear is passionate, what is Rosalind? "Smart?" In Shakespeare, male characters tend to be defined by tangible qualities, and women by more ethereal descriptors. Hamlet will get described as a "man of genius," whereas Juliet will be "written in light." This may be more a failure of masculine critical discourse than playwriterly creation, but you experience Newcomb's Rosalind more as a linguistic "force" than as a person who is like anybody you know. Though more than any Rosalind I've seen, Newcomb manages to make sense of her decision to dress as a man by making it a reaction to the tyrannical decree of Duke Frederick (Gavin Lawrence): when she speaks of having "a swashing and a martial outside, / As many other mannish cowards have / That do outface it with their semblances," you feel she's taking instruction from her despotic uncle.
Lots of fine acting fills out the cast. Sola Thompson is a terrific foil to Newcomb as Celia. James Ridge makes an endearing and huggable Adam. Rasell Holt is effectively mewling and wimpy as Oliver in his villainous era. One effect of repertory casting is you get great actors in parts they are wildly overqualified for, and so we have the gifts of Triney Sandoval as Le Beau, and Sam Luis Massaro as Charles the Wrestler. Massaro, to his credit, actually makes Charles' thumpy exposition feel like new info is being delivered. And Sandoval unveiling a blood-stained wrestling pad was an elegant scenic touch (set design by Lawrence E. Moten III and Daniel Allen).
Derrick Moore as Orlando stumbles in his characterization. Clearly a strong performer, Moore and Rook have not made sense of a number of important beats in the Orlando trajectory. His initial falling in love with Rosalind at the wrestling match is muddy, his care for Adam's near-starvation is too jokey, which then leads to his desperation in trying to extract food from Duke Senior's merry band not being sufficiently severe. Rook also does Moore no favors by having Orlando's joyous outcry about adorning the forest of Arden with love poems to his Rosalind come immediately after he's experienced the death of Adam, his faithful servant. Adam's death is an extratextual insertion you sometimes have to be reminded is not actually in Shakespeare's play, so often is it added by directors. As presented here, we needed an additional moment of Orlando's grief before we could comfortably transition to his literary enthusiasm, and thus we are led into intermission on an unintentionally sour note.
Another moment that ends up depleting the tension reservoir is Rook's decision to have Orlando realize that Ganymede is the disguised Rosalind around the time of their fake marriage by Celia in Act 4, Scene 1. While Rook has the theorizing of James Shapiro on her side (he writes about this choice in his book 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare), having Orlando recognize Rosalind so early ends up making their later forest dealings feel all the more like a foregone conclusion. If Orlando has already determined the disguised young man is his love, then really what are we doing here for so long? Director Declan Donnellan, in his 1991 production with Cheek By Jowl, had Rosalind be upset that Orlando didn't recognize her initially under her masculine disguise, and thus take up the "cure for love" as a means to educate Orlando on the ways of love before a life-long commitment. Some of that urgency would have been useful here. Even the most loving linguistic clarity can turn laborious when it isn't supported by narrative tension.
That being said, Rook adds many lovely insertions, particularly in establishing the forest community of Duke Senior (David Alan Anderson). While Anderson's Senior is more befuddled than inspiring, the largeness of his chosen family in banishment is sweetly intergenerational. Not only are there the standard male compatriots, but Rook makes a point of adding a number of women (one pregnant) and kids and babies to the Arden-based commune. Seeing Audrey (Hannah Ruwe) and Phoebe (Emma Schuld) also get to be part of the golden age forest tribe from the get-go makes for a richer texture to Arden's social fabric.
Personally, I never need to see or hear the scenes about Jaques (David Daniel) castigating Senior's tribe for deer-killing ever again. I've never experienced those moments as anything other than kill-joys. Daniel is a master versifier, and one point where Rook's overly-precious approach to language pays off is in the infamous "all the world's a stage" speech. There, Daniel calmly and clearly takes the audience by the hand and leads us from cradle to grave, with every auditory jewel mined and every poetic rock turned. You wouldn't say Daniel's overall through-line as Jaques is clear, but I don't know that it was to Shakespeare. The placement of such a grand, metaphysical pronouncement in this particular comedy remains a head-scratcher, but hearing the speech spoken by Daniel under the stars of Sauk County is a pleasure needing no justification.
I recognize my reviews often become catalogues of minor grievances, but Joe Meyer as Dennis could stand less "look at me in my walk-on role" mugging. Also, while having Hymen (Leslie Brott) be accompanied by a large-scale, makeshift puppet was charming, the solution was too similar to that of director Kimberley Sykes' 2019 RSC production. I wish the song of the final wedding festivities hadn't been so awkwardly quiet. I also wish directors were less squeamish around Rosalind's epilogue-based invocation of "the men" and "the women" (Rook here softens the language to be more broad). While the harsh binary could feel discriminatory under certain circumstances, I do believe that Rosalind is challenging us: "if you can get through a story like this, where expectations of gender in both society and personal lives have been so thoroughly deconstructed, and still think categories like "the men" and "the women" have any stable meaning, well than God help you, because that ignorance is on you, not me."
Most will likely leave Rook's production sated, having been served a dish of great poetic diction and pleasant woodland vibes. I know I left humming "It Was A Lover And His Lass" as I trekked down the APT hill. The conclusion of As You Like It seems to demand a lack of self-seriousness in the vein of an ending to a Moliere comedy. The quadruple wedding plus the appearance of a third De Boys brother plus the revelation of Frederick's spiritual conversion plus the literal Deus ex machina of Hymen the god of marriage all consort to make an ending that is gleefully soap operatic in the best of ways.
If Rook doesn't exactly "solve" every challenge of As You Like It, the heart and care she brings (mostly) make up for it.
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