Theatre in Review: As You Like It (Delacorte Theatre)

	Renee Elise Goldsberry and Lily Rabe. Photo: Joan Marcus

Rosalind, meet Lily Rabe; Lily Rabe, meet Rosalind. Then again, introductions are hardly necessary. Ever since she stepped onto the Delacorte stage in The Merchant of Venice two summers ago, it's been clear that she was fated to get together with one of Shakespeare's most beguiling heroines. We've had some fine Rosalinds recently; Juliet Rylance was a delight at Brooklyn Academy of Music two years ago and Lynn Collins acquitted herself with brio at the Delacorte in 2005. But, given her intelligence, high spirits, and comic timing -- among actresses her age, she has always seemed the most natively gifted with high comedy technique -- Rabe is uniquely equipped to take on the role.

And she does not disappoint. Her Rosalind, a young lady of the finest breeding, is nevertheless capable of raucously cheering on Orlando -- soon to be her suitor -- in a no-holds-barred wrestling match. Her attempt at striking up a conversation with Orlando -- staged as a series of sorties and retreats, marked by overlapping dialogue -- is a fine piece of screwball comedy. (David Furr is a most stalwart Orlando, whether engaged in hand-to-hand combat or running through a forest, affixing love poems to the trees.) In male disguise, she opts to school Orlando in the ways of romance, handing out rough and imperious commands ("Come, woo me, woo me") in a manner that wittily contradicts her real feelings. And, with a voice that slices through pretense like a sword of common sense, she makes the most of Rosalind's famous advice to a fickle country maid. ("Sell while you can; you are not for all markets.")

If Rabe's Rosalind emphasizes laughter over more melancholic or inspirational notes, this is a function of Daniel Sullivan's festive production, which resets the action in pioneer territory circa 1850, and relies heavily on a bluegrass score by, of all people, Steve Martin. Recently, directors have been finding darker ideas in As You Like It -- Sam Mendes' 2010 staging at BAM turned the court of the usurping Duke Frederick into a paranoid police state, and, once in the Forest of Arden, the action followed a winter-into-spring progression that made the happy finale seem notably hard-won. There's little of that here. Sullivan avoids the text's most nagging question -- Why does Rosalind seem so undisturbed by her father's exile? Why, when she escapes to the forest, does she not seek him out? -- preferring to take a different tack; this is As You Like It as if directed by John Ford, a big-hearted, high-spirited donnybrook of a play. Under the circumstances, the application of bluegrass music to some of the play's lyric passages proves a most fitting gesture. Martin's melodies -- some with lively hop-to-it rhythms, others ballads infused with a touch of longing -- help to capture and crystallize the comedy's quicksilver changes of mood. Indeed, the music acts as a kind of unifying principle, creating an atmosphere where the pursuit of love -- no matter how laughable on the surface -- is a profoundly necessary activity.

In any case, Sullivan has surrounded Rabe with a cast of fine comedians. Donna Lynne Champlin, picking a leaf out of her ample décolletage or leaping into a conniption fit at a proposal of marriage, is ideal as Audrey, the lusty lady goatherd. Renee Elise Goldsberry is a fountain of not-so-sweet reason as Celia, Rosalind's companion in exile; with this role, Shakespeare essentially invented that romantic comedy staple, the wisecracking best friend. Goldsberry is equally amusing when, eyeing Oliver, Orlando's recently reformed brother, she decides to get into the romance game herself. Unlike many others who have played the role of the clown Touchstone, Oliver Platt sees it as an opportunity for skillful underplaying, whether he is daintily wiping his mouth with a misplaced love letter or offering himself up -- complete with his ample frame and toby mug face -- to an available maid, asking "Doth my simple features content you?" in his best simpering manner.

Providing the necessary counterbalance to all this tomfoolery is the Jaques of Stephen Spinella. Outfitted with shoulder-length locks, bushy beard, and long gray coat --looking as if he has been dispossessed of his plantation -- he is the play's center of disenchantment. Not that he isn't funny: His demand for a song from some wandering minstrels ("Come, warble, come") is more like an invitation to a funeral, and he can turn a compliment ("You have a nimble wit") into something more like a scathing dismissal. Spinella doesn't spoof Jaques' melancholy temperament nor does he pile on the gloom; instead, he takes him at face value, creating a character who, having seen the world, declines, thoughtfully, to participate in any unwonted merriment. His contribution cannot be underestimated; he supplies the crucial discordant notes that offset the potentially cloying qualities in Sullivan's approach -- and his reading of the famous "Seven Ages of Man" is a stunner.

In a cast overflowing with good performances, there's also fine work from Andre Braugher, equally persuasive as Duke Frederick and Duke Senior, Rosalind's father; Jon DeVries, earthily amusing as Corin, a shepherd who sells his farm to Rosalind; McIntyre Dixon as the elderly servant Adam; Robert Joy as a discreetly foppish courtier; Omar Metwally as Orlando's corrupt brother, who learns the evil of his ways; and Will Rogers as a hapless-in-love rustic.

The frontier theme is vividly carried out in the production design. Duke Frederick's court is represented by the imposing exterior of a wooden fort (another fine John Lee Beatty scenic concept). When the action adjourns to the Forest of Arden, the fort splits open, and Natasha Katz's magical lighting takes over, turning the exquisitely landscaped wilderness into a place of shimmering beauty. (There's also a stunning backlighting effect, during a hunting sequence, that transforms the actors into a series of silhouettes amid the forest greenery.) Jane Greenwood's costumes range from formal wear for Frederick's court to rough-and-ready outfits for the forest characters (including the shepherdess outfit that Celia wears with such amusing ill will). The always-smooth sound design, by Acme Sound Partners, serves the music and the actors' voices equally well.

And when the time comes for Rosalind, using evasion, misdirection, and verbal sleight-of-hand, to untie all of the play's romantic knots, Rabe does so with the skill of a practiced magician. Cheers to the Public Theatre for giving us this lovely summertime gift. You may find a deeper, more challenging production of As You Like It, but you are unlikely to encounter one that seems so effortlessly airborne. --David Barbour