PicksInSix Review: As You Like It - Chicago Shakespeare Theater
JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, RINGO AND WILLIAM!
The exuberant, Friday night opening crowd at Chicago Shakespeare Theater who took their seats early were rewarded with a celebratory pre-show in a wrestling ring, a match in progress billed as “Duke Frederick presents Superstar Wrestling Tonight” where “Charles “2 Guns” Leibowitz Takes On All. $$$ Cash Prize.” It’s a crafty, entertaining, and hugely comical entrée for Director Daryl Cloran’s flat-out brilliant, Beatles-infused adaptation of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” now playing in the Courtyard.
This colorful, creative, exhilarating production—which owes its’ origin to Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver and presented at Chicago Shakes in association with Edmonton’s The Citadel Theatre and Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre—weaves together a dazzling cast that includes principals from the original production and top Chicago and regional talent. The result is quite simply ecstasy on Navy Pier!
The physical display of the wrestling match and the slapstick comic mayhem felt more like play than prologue and serves to orient the audience to this marvelous company and the unique musical journey that lays ahead while accentuating the love-at-first-sight moment between Frederick’s niece Rosalind (Lakeisha Renee) and fearless young lord Orlando (Liam Quealy). And when the hilarious antics of the ring MC (Kayvon Khoshkam), referee LeBeau (Deborah Hay) and Eleanor Rigby (Heidi Kettenring) are completed and the winner of the match between Orlando and Charles (Austin Eckert) is declared, the hook is set for Frederick (Kevin Gudahl) to deny the riches of victory, divide the young lovers and make the grand leap forward into an abridged—and highly entertaining and understandable—production of Shakespeare’s delightful comedy of disguise.
With over twenty Beatles hits framing the text and complementing the story, Cloran punctuates moments of confessional (“I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There”), passionate longing (“Eight Days A Week”), and jubilation (“Good Day Sunshine”). The rollicking on-stage band—The Forest Lords—and featured performances of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (Eckert), “I Am The Walrus” and “Fool on the Hill” (Hay), “Something” (Kettenring), the lovers anthem “Got To Get You Into My Life” and the capstone hit “All You Need Is Love,” had everyone in the house swaying to the beat.
Quealy’s powerhouse vocals and triple-threat presence is right at home as Orlando whose love has no bounds for the feisty Rosalind, played and sung beautifully by Renee. Khoshkam’s Touchstone, an amped up Elton John, provides over-the-top high comedy in his relationship with the steamy temptress Audrey, a delightful turn for Lachrisa Grandberry. Hay is unmatched in the role of the melancholy Forest Lord Jacques as is Gudahl who plays Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden. Orlando’s staunch brother Oliver (Tony Carter) finds redemption after being saved in an encounter with a lion and true love with Celia (Brezill) and all‘s eventually well with Phoebe (Kettenring) and the slap-dancing shepherd Silvius (Michael Dashefsky). You will revel in the fine work of Steven Pringle, Nancy Voigts, and the Forest Lords of Arden (Eckert, Dashefsky, Adam Wesley Brown, Kieran McCabe, Kurt Schweitz and Jeff Kurysz).
The Courtyard is ablaze with the vibrant tones and a sixties vibe by set designer Pam Johnson, splashed with Gerald King’s eye-popping lighting, the summer of love costumes by Carmen Alatorre, pitch-perfect sound design by Owen Hutchinson and Peter McBoyle and gorgeous music throughout supervised by Ben Elliott. If you want to know a secret, the flower power VW van literally rocks, at one point, but it is the joyous and triumphant return of live theatre on Navy Pier that makes “As You Like It” the show to see eight days a week through November 21.
PHOTO CREDIT|Liz Lauren
CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER
presents
AS YOU LIKE IT
through November 21, 2021
Courtyard Theater
Navy Pier
(312) 595-5600
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