BJ Lillis's Reviews > As You Like It

Back in high school, I was music director for a summer camp production of As You Like It in a local park. The director—of both play and camp—put us in the 60s, squares versus hippies. I led an onstage rock band through rock’n’roll adaptations of Shakespeare’s songs and 60s hits (Canned Heat’s Goin’ up the Country, Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride). Obvious as all get out, but also perfect. And our leads were about 16, so. Anyway, it was unbelievable fun, and I will love this play forever and am completely and utterly biased in its favor. But I hadn’t actually read the play since that long ago summer. Well, it’s hot and sticky and July and As You Like It just felt right.

Rosalind more than earns her reputation as one of literature’s all time great cross-dressers, but Celia is obviously the gay one. There is only one read of her abrupt marriage that makes a lick of sense, and it’s that she’s playing Susan to Rosalind’s Emily Dickinson. Not that very much about this play makes sense. I mean, from the wrestling match to the lioness to whatever the hell was going on with Audrey to the false Duke’s abrupt conversion at the end apropos of nothing—sense is simply not what we’ve all come to the Forest of Arden to make.