Photos by Jackie Merrill
In Shakespearean terms, a comedy is a play that not only makes the audience laugh, but also ends in marriage or rebirth. This year’s Shakespeare play, As You Like It, ends in four marriages—so the Drama Society had better show us one funny play.
Set at the Woodstock music festival of 1969, the play reimagined the nobility of Shakespeare’s day as boxers and members of a New York Mafia family
Go-go dancers and neon bell-bottomed jeans created a 1960s-inspired stage spectacle that kept the audience in stitches. Though only three-quarters filled, the Roberts-Dubbs Auditorium overflowed with laughter.
From the beginning, director Mary Mastandrea’s production imbued material that might seem old and dusty to many students with a witty and boisterous spirit. The first scene—in which Mafia boxing champion Charles Atlas, played by senior Esteban Osorno, fights the wimpy underdog Orlando, played by sophomore Robert Mast—had the audience in an uproar. The exaggerated contrast between little Orlando and the stocky, roaring Charles made Orlando’s sudden victory all the more comic.
The production featured seasoned actors familiar to the student theatergoer, such as senior Sofia Cabanas, who played Duchess Frederica, the Mafia family ringleader who exiles Orlando and his witty love interest, Rosalind, played by senior Gabby St.-Pierre, to the Forest of Arden. In addition, senior Jake Gonnella gave a hilarious performance as the bare-chested and oft-inebriated Duke Senior. Wearing nothing but a fur vest and skin-tight white pants, he sluggishly roamed the stage, belting out Woodstock music like a pro.
However, the play did not succeed on the strength of its lead roles alone—these roles were enhanced by assorted ensembles of singers, dancers and boy scouts, which maintained the play’s comic energy even as they offered exposition. Led by junior Jan Meese in a purple velvet, Sergeant Pepper-style jacket, the first of these groups, The Grassy Roots, used a performance of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to segue into an explanation of Woodstock and the laid-back culture of the 1960s. Naturally, the group appeared high off LSD, a 1960s drug of choice.
Though often difficult to understand to the viewer not familiar with the plot, the production held its audience’s attention thanks to a quirky cast, which kept the show in a constant state of joy and maniacal behavior right through to the end, when characters joined in matrimony to the tune of “Age of Aquarius,” earning an eruption of applause from the audience.
By evoking the “anything goes” spirit of Woodstock, the play brought joy to audience members both young and old. It appealed to the nostalgia of parent-aged playgoers, while for the students, watching their friends play such eccentric characters gave them reason to laugh and be rowdy.
The generational conflict of the times did not reemerge at this celebration of 1960s culture, as both parents and students were in agreement: As You Like It was every bit as funny as its four marriages demanded.
Sophie Rubin can be contacted at [email protected]
