Last night, I was fortunate to snag a ticket to “As You Like It”at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was only last spring that I was witness to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s inaugural season of the Bridge Project. Director Sam Mendes put together a phenomenal group of American and British actors in two plays: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Stoppard’s The Cherry Orchard. Both plays were exquisite and featured some of my favorite actors, including Ethan Hawke, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall and Richard Easton.
Year two of The Bridge Project is bringing to the stage two more great Shakespeare plays, As You Like It and The Tempest, considered to be his last play. In the Director’s Note in the program, Mendes writes that “The plays this year – although each stands on its own – are designed and conceived as a single gesture, a single journey.”
The current company includes Stephen Dillane (Jacques/Prospero), Christian Camargo (Orlando/Ariel), Juliet Rylance (Rosalind/Miranda), Thomas Sadoski (Touchstone/Stephano), Ron Cephas Jones (Charles the Wrestler/Caliban) Michelle Beck (Celia/Ceres), Ashlie Atkinson (Phoebe/Juno), Jenni Barber (Audrey/Iris), Edward Bennett (Oliver/Ferdinand), Alvin Epstein (Adam/Gonzalo), Jonathan Fried (Le Beau/Alonso), Richard Hansell (Amiens/Sebastian), Aaron Krohn (Silvius/Adrian), Anthony O’Donnell (Corin/Trinculo), Michael Thomas (Dukes Frederick and Senior/Antonio) and Ross Waiton (Boatswain, Francisco, First Lord).
Like last year, this is a first-rate production. The set is beautiful and when the characters venture into the woods, a lovely snow is gathered, later turning to spring with dazzling trees, grass and splendor. The music, led by music director Richard Clayton, is almost jarring and fits right into the tempo of the play. The story is one of Shakespeare’s most female-dominated productions, and certainly one of his funniest. It revolves around Rosalind, who is fleeing persecution in her father’s court, accompanied by her cousin Celia and Touchstone the court jester, to find safety and eventually love in the Forest of Arden. Juliet Rylance as Rosalind and Stephen Dillane as Orlando make a heavenly pair and have a long-awaited romance that took my breath away. Having a woman do the epilogue of a Shakespeare play is another treat, as are the musical numbers that occur during the second act.
All in all, this is an excellent production and one that needs to be seen. I am looking forward to “The Tempest” so I can compare performaces and have another theatrical experience that transcends all others. And I’ll be back next season, too.
Recent Comments