As You Like It SF Gate Review

Courtesy of The SF Gate

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Where there's a Will, and a gender-bender

Robert Hurwitt

Summertime and the Shakespeare is easily accessible, from the Bay Area's more established festivals to the smaller, no-frills troupes touring local parks. One of the more unusual of the latter is Woman's Will, the intrepid little troupe dedicated to all-female productions of (mostly) Shakespeare plays.

For Artistic Director Erin Merritt, the main idea is to give female artists unusual opportunities to stretch and train. But it's also a sauce-for- the-goose approach to the artist who wrote for an all-male company (Juliet, Cleopatra and all the rest were played by boys). The idea couldn't be clearer than in the role Merritt is playing this summer, Rosalind in "As You Like It."

Where Elizabethan theatergoers may have enjoyed the nudge-nudge of watching a boy playing a girl who disguises herself as a boy, Woman's Will attendees get to see a girl as the boy-as-girl-playing-boy -- being wooed by a girl playing a boy who thinks the girl he's pretending to court is really a boy. If that's confusing -- hey, it's a comedy. Besides, it doesn't really matter once you're drawn into the play. If you can accept a painted backdrop as a court or a forest, an actor becomes whatever gender she's playing.

The play's the thing, and "As You Like It" is a reliable pleasure. Director Leslie McCauley's update to the Carnaby Street hippies of 1960s London adds sly whiffs of generation-gap social change to the treacherous court versus idyllic Forest of Arden theme, best reflected in the counterculture spoofs of the actors and Amy Nielson's Summer of Love costumes. McCauley's pacings are erratic and the cast is uneven, as of Saturday's opening in Berkeley's John Hinkel Park, but several bright performances carry the day.

Merritt is an engaging, well-spoken Rosalind, gently boyish, confused and titillated by the closeness of her unsuspecting beloved, Orlando (a breezy, sincere and beguiling Rami Margron). Jenny Debevec provides savvy support as an upper-class hippie Celia. Jennifer Erdmann is a pleasantly witty, stoned Touchstone and sings beautifully (nice song settings by Stephen Lew). Valerie Weak is exceptionally funny as a French fop and a smitten rube, as is Kendra Chell as a macho wrestler and a vain, awkwardly flirty Phebe.