Introduction
As you like it is a play featuring one of the popular quoted speech of William Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage” The play follows Rosalind the heroine who flees to Arden forest in search of safety and love. The fleeing is facilitated by her hounding in her uncle’s square. In her company to the forest is the court jester Touchstone and Celia her cousin. As you like it a pleaser to the crowd by Charter as it is mention in the title of the play. The play is directed by Daniel Sullivan after modifier outings for two summers in the park. The play takes the Merchant of Venice brief of All’s Well That Ends Well very seriously indeed. The play takes place on the fourth day of October.
John Lee Beatty a character in the play serves to make over the setting of the play from the watchtower and the barred timber walls of the Court scenes to a vivid picture of the Forest of Arden exhibited by thicket of green grass. This generates the misapprehension of a central natural park rather than a performance stage. Jane Greenwood cooperates with John to complete the transformation of the stage by her witty costumes thus inserting tint to the performers of the play. The characters body movement and the general conduct in the play including their play costumes and their engagement with each other perfectly serves to deliver the themes intended by the author and the director of the play.
The selection of the production setting of the play in the antebellum countryside of American South, circa 1840 appears to be directed more by atmospheric apprehensions than thematic concerns. The play text has no relations or correlation of which ever kind to slavery associated to the South or even the Northern associated simmering friction that resulted to the historic American civil war. The court scene at this occasion is less of a plantation than a citadel. It is also charming conceit to involve the score by Steve Martin of the toe tapping original bluegrass though it is incorporation might be a mere excuse.
It is very popular for Shakespeare’s plays to be considered as more entertaining and not fussy reverence. The Sullivan’s production is made incisive by the understanding of the above popularity of Shakespeare’s plays as more of entertainment. The play is all about pleasantry and pleasure thus making the whole thing pleasant, fine and smooth. The director incorporates highbrow and lowbrow, physical comedy and verbal jousts and revelry with sobriety to bring out the flow and uses it to capture the audience. He also incorporates music employing an inventive way of introducing the conditions aimed at every performance in every scene. Music is more used cinematic to bring out the prevailing theme of love in the play.
In my genuine opinion, the play is perfectly set and executed perfectly ranging from the selection of the setting and the characterization. The music played by the four musicians under the leadership of Jesse Lenat brings a flavor to the play. The flavor portrays an emancipation escape of the captives who had been restrained under the regulations and tasks of the authorities. The author Shakespeare and the director of the play Sullivan perfectly manage to deliver this literal work to the society using an entertaining tone. This is true to the grounds that the whole play is entertaining.
