Because this is a production of a beloved, great comedy by William Shakespeare, and because this is the great Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Ontario, Canada, three or four scenes in As You Like It are played superbly by some of the finest Shakespearean actors in the world. And they are charming, unmistakably clear, and a special rare delight. Particularly, two famous scenes are gems: first, the one in which Rosalind, disguised as a boy, Ganymede, gathers a group of adorable young lovers and promises them a later meeting in which she will grant them their heart’s desires or instruct them to find love and happiness if they then decide that they can no longer follow their present desires; and second, when -- showing up as her own beautiful female self, Rosalind does just that. Those two scenes – and a very few shorter moments -- are worth seeing this god-awful mishmash for. Petrina Bromley is a very boyish “Ganymede” and a lovely Rosalind. Cyrus Lane is her virile, adoring Orlando. Jamie Mac is almost too appealing as the handsome, surprisingly eloquent Silvius, who wins the strong-willed, amorous Phebe of Ijeoma Emesowum when Phebe learns that her adored Ganymede is a lovely woman. Sanjay Talwar does what he can to be funny as Touchstone, but he’s undercut by some awkward direction and a busy, disgustingly unfunny costume. Deidre Gillard-Rawlings plays Audrey with humorous charm. But even the great Seana McKenna can’t make much out of the unfocused direction of her male Jacques. And most of the rest of this tedious farrago consists of the slovenly looking dirty off-white undergarments, sets given “help” by having the audience use noisemakers and wave garbage, like bunches of pine leaves. Those accompany noises that supposedly indicate that we have moved to a forest scene, etc. A kind of female Master of Ceremonies regularly interrupts the play to instruct sections of the audience to act up as something between competing improvisers and Pavlov’s dogs obeying their cues. This is theater as defined by those fawning Entertainment Directors on cruise ships. It should expand the audience to include those who have no fraction of any interest in attending excellent theater but are willing to expand a theater company’s take if they can be persuaded that the event is about them.
