As You Like It

[ceebeegee]

I saw Dana's As You Like It last night in Woodside. She was great, dead-on--she played LeBeau, William, Martext and Hymen. She sounded absolutely lovely as Hymen, her Martext was hilarious, her William was specific and real. (I got there late so didn't see her LeBeau.) As for the rest of the cast, some I quite liked and some not so much. I thought the Celia was terrific, perhaps the best. Phebe was cute and funny too although very under-directed, did a lot of the "leading with the head and hands" style of acting. Jacques was good and grounded, and the Sylvius was good (although again, under-directed). I really DID NOT like the Rosalind--almost all of her lines were out to the audience, there was no chemistry between her and Orlando, or her and any other character. The worst was when she's grilling Oliver about Orlando's injury--the one urgent scene she has and she delivers her questions not to Oliver "But for the bloody napkin?" and "did he leave him there?") but OUT TO THE AUDIENCE. Jeez, dude! How the hell does the audience know? You should be boring a hole into Oliver with your eyes--HE knows, why aren't you looking at HIM? In general (that scene notwithstanding), AYLI is soooooo fluffy and you really need a good Rosalind to establish why they're there--there's no inherent urgency to it, no real reason they're playing love games for three acts in the forest, so the justification needs to come from the actors. It's all a push me-pull me game--with her words, she's testing him ("I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen...") and then a few lines later, she's pulling him back, flirting with him ("unless you take her without her tongue"). These scenes are so much damn fun, they're such a joy to play and I saw none of that in this actor. The Orlando wasn't terrific, but at least you saw why Orlando was doing what he was doing--I saw no motivation in the Rosalind, just a lot of declaiming. Much as Duncan was inspired to brush off his cut and do it again, I'm inspired to PLAY it again! Duncan? Should we remount it? Jason could play Touchstone this time, as he should've last time.

On a more prosaic note, the park was incredibly buggy. Oh, and the music and choreography was quite lovely. That was pretty impressive for only 2 1/2 weeks rehearsal. The cast was all-female, which concept grew on me after awhile--it just started reading as this idyllic silly story in the woods, put on by shepherd girls or something. I just wish they'd tried a little harder to look like guys.

I chatted with Dana afterwards and told her about upcoming Holla Holla stuff. And I'll be seeing her this Wednesday for the first Thyme rehearsal!