Date: Fri 27-Oct-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-12

Quick Words:

As-You-Like-It-Shakespeare

Full Text:

(rvw of As You Like It at Long Wharf, New Haven)

Theatre Review-

Production A Matter Of Taste

(with photo)

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN - Back in the Sixties when we lived in New York City, it was infra

dig to invent amusing new ways of interpreting Shakespeare that involved

trendy modern touches. The first one I remember was Their Own Thing , a rock

opera version of The Twelfth Night that was very lively and entertaining.

Stacy Keach starred in MacBird , a satire which presented Lyndon Johnson as

Macbeth.

I once escorted 60 high school seniors by subway to Joseph Papp's Public

Theater to see Cleavon Little's portrayal of Hamlet as a tragi-comic figure.

When Hamlet entered the stage paddling a canoe, throwing balled up newspapers

at Horatio, and later when he demonstrated his contempt for his mother,

Gertrude's, protestations of innocence by dressing up in the uniform of a

stadium peanut vendor and tossing peanuts into the audience, my students could

not believe their eyes.

Now into the Nineties, renditions of the Bard tend to be more conventional.

Over the past two years we have seen As You Like It staged four times within

travelling distance of Newtown, in a variety of versions: the stately classic,

ever so slightly dragging, at Yale Rep; the economy "we can't afford sets

anymore" at D'ART; and the neatly-turned, well-crafted surprise at the Town

Players' Little Theatre in Newtown.

Finally, there is this season's opener at Long Wharf, in which director John

Tillinger seems to be reaching back to the free-wheeling style of the Sixties

in a production which focuses on the bawdy side of Shakespearian comedy,

aiming to excite the young apprentices clustered in the pit with rowdy double

entendres rather than exalt the aesthetes with the beauty and imagery of

language.

The costumes are vaguely 20th Century: Rosalind in a male disguise looks like

a newsboy out of Horatio Alger, and the marriage god Hymen ends the play by

cruising about the stage on roller blades. There is a lot of burlesque going

on in which the Pastoral characters are played as if they came from Dogpatch.

The most famous lines, such as the "Seven Ages of Man" speech by the

melancholy Jacques, are reduced to lesser importance.

The best acting job is done by Sean Haberle as the brave young hero Orlando,

who must flee to the Forest of Arden to escape his evil brother Oliver. As his

beloved Rosalind, who is also in flight from her evil uncle, Kathleen McNenny

also gives an appealing performance. The madrigals sung by Amiens the courtier

(Pedro Porro) are lovely.

This is all a matter of taste. Certainly the Long Wharf version of As You Like

It is fast-paced, anything but boring. Some people will get a real kick and a

lot of laughs out of it, others will be offended, and some will be bemused.

No one will go to sleep.

The Long Wharf presentation of As You Like It continues through November 19.

The theatre is at 222 Sargent Drive in New Haven; contact the box office at

787-4282.