Through July 17
AS YOU LIKE IT The Saul Elkin Stage/Shakespeare in Delaware Park
Theatre is mostly a look into the past, with Shakespeare a leading example.
This year, Shakespeare in Delaware Park has done this in two comedies, Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Both were on the schedule for 2020, but we all know what happened then.
So, that season of two-comedies seemed good choices for 2022.
It’s also a break from the usual mix of a comedy and tragedy on what is now known as the Saul Elkin Stage in Delaware Park, in honor of the actor, director and UB professor who started the free festival nearly a half-century ago.
We have enough tragedy around us and two comedies seems to be the way to go, at least this year.
So, we get this look at internal feuding inside noble families and gamboling in the woods, by nobles and peasants.
In Shakespeare’s time, it was probably an issue the playwright had to be careful about, since wars among the nobility and royal families had left peasants under the hooves of armored knights, generation after generation, and power struggles continued.
Likely scripts were read very carefully when they came in for approval.
Here, Duke Frederick (John Kreuzer) has knocked his brother, Duke Senior, out of power and off to the Forest of Arden.
That has consequences up and down the chain of power.
The new duke’s daughter, Celia (Jamie Nablo), is tight with Rosalind (Marissa Biondolillo), Senior’s daughter, and Frederick allows the deposed duke’s daughter to hang around.
That’s until he changes his mind and both women decide to flee to the forest, Celia as a woman and Rosalind disguised as a guy, Ganymede.
There, they meet Orlando (Darryl Semira), younger son of a dead aristocrat who is being mistreated by his older brother, the heir, Oliver (Jake Hayes).
Orlando fled his brother’s threats to Arden, accompanied by the loyal peasant Adam (Larry Roswell).
There are comic behaviors and people falling in love and there are the main comic characters, Touchstone (Norm Sham) and Jacques (Tom Makar), to keep the groundlings happy.
Both have long experience at this and are wonderful.
You just have to sit back on the grass (or folding chair) on Shakespeare Hill and see this old story unfurl.
Director Steve Vaughan has a strong cast and an interesting set from David Dwyer, with a fine switch from castles and power to the greenery of that Forest of Arden.
As so often in the Bard’s comedy, it all finishes with a wedding, here, multiple weddings.
It’s all fun, welcome in these times.
Comedy for a summer evening is a good reason to head down to Delaware Park and see “As You Like it.”
A.W.
© Copyright 2023 - Speakupwny.com
hosted by Online Media, Inc
Buffalo Web Design and Web Hosting
Top of Page
|
