As You Like It In Spring Green

Nationally recognized Wisconsin theatre company The American Players Theatre opens its season this year with a production of a classic pastoral comedy As You Like It.  Director Tim Ocel and company take the production design in 1930’s direction. In the Zane Williams press pics available online, there’s a kind of stylish early 20^th century feel to this particular journey to exile in the forest of Arden complete with love, anger, mistaken identity and the usual sorts of things Shakespeare goes on about in his comedies. 

Judging from the pics, Ocel’s take on the classic is juxtaposing one retro style with another . . . scenic design by Andrew Boyce has a very clean, American country feel to it. The costuming is credited to “B. Modern.” Okay, so it’s kind of a cheesy name, but there’s a richness to the costuming that should make this one a lot of fun to look at in any case. 

My favorite of the pics has to be the one below—that’s Hillary Clemens in the foreground with Matt Schwader. Thery’re playing the lovers Rosalind and Orlando. They’ve fallen in love and find each other in exhile in the forest of Arden, but the production design here has them in Plaid flannel button-downs and jeans—staring at each other longingly over a stack of hay bales. This looks like fun. I look forward to seeing it.

Other prominent members of the cast include David Daniel as the jester Touchstone, Brian Mani in dual roles as both Frederick and his exiled brother Duke Senior, Paul Bentzen as Orlando’s servant Adam and James Ridge as the melancholy Jaques.

American Players Theatre’s As You Like It runs through October 3^rd in Spring Green, Wisconsin.