Alyssa Diamond plays Rosalind’s cousin Celia (left), and Amy Frances Quint is Rosalind, in the court scene of the Frog & Peach presentation of William Shakespeare’s 1599 comedy, As You Like It.
Maybe it’s the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol and the subsequent House Committee hearings this past summer, but the idea of fleeing to the Forest of Arden has rarely been so enticing. Directors often reinvent it as a rowdy retreat, replete with music and dance, but in Lynnea Benson’s production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Arden is mellow, soft, and dappled in sylvan light (created by Dennis Parichy).
From left: Jonathan Reed Wexler is Jaques, Camelia Iturregul Fuentes is Lady Delphine, and Martin Bodenheimer is Sir Henry in the Forest of Arden. Photographs by Maria Baranova.
Returning to the live stage this season with William Shakespeare’s most sweet-tempered comedy, the Frog & Peach Theatre Company is presenting a gender-bending production notable for a luminous performance by Amy Frances Quint as Rosalind, and Vivien Landau and Ange Berneau in the gender-switched roles of Queen Senior and Queen Frederica, respectively.
The gender changes in the production have pluses and minuses: the plus is that they give the play a fresh, feminine vibe; the minus is that the original mirroring in Shakespeare’s plot of Duke Senior and Orlando as the slighted brothers of the usurping Duke Frederick and arrogant Oliver (Anuj Parikh), respectively, is lost. But, dramatic structure aside, Shakespeare’s language sounds new again when it’s spoken by women protagonists such as Queen Senior and Queen Frederica.
The central love story between Orlando (Kyle Primack) and Rosalind (Amy Francis Quint), is deliciously teased out over five acts. Their courtship is the stuff of young love: tongue-tied conversations; blushing looks, and melancholy moments when the other is absent.
“[Amy Frances] Quint brings, if not the first blush of youth, genuine gravitas to her Rosalind.”
Kyle Primack’s Orlando is a youthful bundle of contradictions. He has masculine good looks, a genial temperament, and shrewd independence, but also the benign stupidity of a totally unobservant young man. After all, he fails to see that the page Ganymede, who is instructing him on the complex nature of love, is actually his beloved Rosalind disguised as a male youth. Orlando is also a wannabe poet, and the love verses he affixes to trees not only are fun to listen to, they are Shakespeare’s pointed send-up of the pastoral literary mode that was all the rage in Elizabethan England. Landau’s Queen Senior, in fact, captures its spirit in her eloquent speech on the virtues of the simple forest life, which ends with the famous lines: “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Amy Frances Quint’s Rosalind is beautifully sane, and, when not analyzing the labyrinths of human love, is exploring life’s possible freedoms in Arden. But the opportunity to see Quint perform the delightful heroine Rosalind, backed up by Alyssa Diamond’s Celia, is something special. Older than most actresses who have tackled this coveted role, Quint brings, if not the first blush of youth, genuine gravitas to her Rosalind. In a late, arresting scene with Orlando who complains that he will die without Rosalind’s love, Quint, dressed as Ganymede, admonishes him for telling lies: “But these are all lies: men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
The courtier Amiens (John L. Payne) attends upon the banished Queen Senior (Vivien Landau) in the Forest of Arden.
The creative team, on a shoestring budget, manages to do much. Asa Benally’s spartan set is dominated by two cardboard birch trees, one on each side of the stage, embellished here and there by Orlando’s love verses. While this set is ideal for the goings-on in Arden, it hardly synchs with the play’s opening scene in Oliver’s orchard or Queen Frederica’s court. Benally’s coherently eclectic costumes succeed better: they fit any time period and look like they have been collected from flea markets around the globe.
Following the Public Theater’s musical adaptation of As You Like It in Central Park, some theatergoers may feel that they have had enough of this comedy for one season. They should think again. Benson’s revival, with original music by Ted Zurkowski, gives us a more straightforward look at Shakespeare’s play, with none of its characters getting short shrift. There is much to savor here: Touchstone’s (Eric Doss) wit, the wrestler Charles’s (John L. Payne) nerve, and Jaques’s celebrated Seven Ages of Man speech, which is interpreted by Jonathan Reed Wexler with satiric gusto.
The enduring appeal of As You Like It is that all its characters, from the malcontent Jaques to the herculean Orlando to the sublime Rosalind aren’t types, but individuals who get under one’s skin and invite viewers to ponder the fine complexities of life.
The Frog & Peach Theatre Company production of As You Like It runs at Theatre 71 (152 W 71st St.) through Oct. 23. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. on Sunday; there is also a Wednesday performance on Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and information, visit frogandpeachtheatre.org.
