After a hectic day of two Christmas parties and a picture with the Secretary, I saw As You Like It, the first Shakespeare play as part of this year’s STC season. It was entertaining, but different.
As usual, the production values of this STC production were impressive. The acting was also extremely good. The staging of the play itself was done in a way that was sort of interesting, but in the end seemed to distract from the intrinsic drama of the play. Each scene of the evolving story was set in a different era from American history. Starting from an oppressive kingdom of Puritans, the escape to Arden went trough Valley Forge, the pre-war South, post Civil War, the Gold Rush, etc. They used an overarching device of setting the play within an early film production to justify the changing themes. As I said, the acting was great, the staging was beautiful, but it somewhat distracted from the basic play. Nonetheless, it was quite enjoyable. It’s going to be interesting to see my reaction when I again see one of the pared-back productions of CalShakes.