Back in 2022, when New York still was recovering from the pandemic, the multi-hyphenate theater artist Shaina Taub and her collaborator Laurie Woolery came up with a progressive, morally earnest idea for the outdoor Delacorte Theater in Central Park: a version of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” with original, contemporary numbers interspersed with brief snatches of scenes from the play and some casting switches in gender so that the Forest of Arden became a paradise for same-sex couples, straight couples, young, old, everyone who believes in love. Even Jaques became a softie.
And in those mostly upbeat songs with entirely contemporary lyrics — there are 17 of them, I believe, with styles ranging from country to boy band to straight-up Broadway — Taub expresses a collective worldview very common among theater people in 2022, a year when everything felt insecure. They worried aloud over how to make their work impactful again, and yet also true, and also how to make the world understand that love must be defined with inclusivity. Taub and Woolery also included community members from groups like Domestic Workers United and a group representing the formerly incarcerated in their show, a statement in and of itself.
That New York Public Theater production has become licensable, and Writers Theatre artistic director Braden Abraham is helming one of the first indoor professional productions of a piece that I suspect will be a big hit with colleges going forward. Taub (who wrote “Suffs” and currently appears in “Ragtime” on Broadway) is a formidable composing talent who wears her heart on her sleeve: one of the more lovely numbers here, titled “All the World’s a Stage,” asks, in several different ways, a question faced by most anyone developing something new and theatrical: How do we make the magic real?
All that said, I went far more for Taub’s terrific “Suffs” than this “As You Like It,” at least in this incarnation, mostly because I think she just has so many songs and things to say here, she needed to write her own musical. The switches back to Shakespeare are a tad swamped. Better, I think, to have borrowed the essence of these characters, started from scratch and taken things in different directions.
The source playwright, and thus the source material, maintains a certain ambivalence about love and relationships that is part of its allure. Add in too much earnest, can’t-we-all-just-get-along commentary, thus replacing the notes of cynicism from the likes of Jaques, and you get, as Sondheim liked to say, a hat upon a hat. It’s understandable. It was 2022. Just getting a show up was a miracle.
Abraham uses his considerable staging skill to create a warm, immersive and gently interactive piece that some folks around Glencoe might rightly see as a way to make a Shakespearean comedy more palatable for young people. He’s cast a very lively group of mostly young actors, anchored by such talented folks as Paul Oakley Stovall and the classically skilled Phoebe Gonzalez (as Rosalind). That said, the emphasis here clearly was on people who could handle Shakespeare (and indeed this crew can, including a moving young actor named Grace Steckler, a name to watch).
But in reality, when you have this many musical numbers, and only extracts from Shakespeare, and have moved indoors, you actually are doing a musical and musical director Michael Mahler needed a couple more of the city’s many truly legit singers from that world to do some of the heavy lifting (especially at this theater, where recent musicals have been so great). That’s not to say this cast can’t carry a tune. They surely can, and it’s a pleasure to hear the distinctive sound of guitarist Matthew C. Yee as a lovable Jaques. But on opening night, at least, not everything was fully secure, musically speaking. I imagine that will get better as the show runs.
In the end, Taub and Woolery’s “As You Like It” is an expression of what these artists wish the world would be, always a legitimate reason to go to the theater, even if not necessarily akin to Shakespeare. This is a very warmhearted show; a pick me up, you might say, or sing.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “As You Like It” (3 stars)
When: Through Dec. 14
Where: Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $35-$115 at 847-242-6000 and writerstheatre.org
