Theatre in Review: As You Like it (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theater)

	Darius de Haas and company. Photo: Joan Marcus

The forest of Arden is the place to be these nights, at least as seen at the Delacorte, where a musical version of As You Like It is welcoming audiences into its warm embrace. In Myung Hee Cho's charming scenic design, Arden is populated with trees sporting light-up taffeta flowers and colorfully beribboned love letters that drop into sight on cue. Isabella Byrd's lighting paints the stage in pastels, broadening her palette to include bursts of saturated colors and a rainbow-hued finale. Adding to the festival atmosphere, costume designer Emilio Sosa unfurls bolt after bolt of batik-patterned fabric, giving a distinct look to each member of the company. Spending ninety minutes in these environs is the pleasantest of mini vacations.

And, once in the company of "Ardenites" (the script's designation) one doesn't want to leave; admittedly, getting there takes a bit of effort. Adaptors Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery strike a beguilingly melancholic in the opening number, with the resident contrarian Jaques (played by Taub, also the composer and lyricist) offering a condensed version of the character's famed seven-ages-of-man speech while presenting, in succession, the lovers Orlando and Rosalind as children, adolescents, and young adults. But the expository scenes -- detailing how Rosalind, her cousin Celia, and Orlando run afoul of the despotic Duke Frederick, causing them to flee into exile -- are rattled off dutifully and without much wit. Admittedly there are quite a few housekeeping issues to deal with, plot-wise, and even this sequence is buoyed by "The Man I'm Supposed to Be," a lively introductory number for Orlando. But you can feel everyone itching to get out of town where the fun can begin.

Which it does as soon as Darius de Haas -- a naturally authoritative performer with a smiled that instantly seduces -- takes the stage as the exiled Duke Senior, followed by a legion of forest dwellers to deliver "In Arden," an ecstatic paean to Shakespeare's green world, where broken hearts are mended, bitter rivalries resolved, and all sins forgiven. Or, as the song puts it, "We shall seek the blessings in our miseries/We shall learn to see the forest for the trees."

Especially compelling is the vast chorus backing up de Haas: This As You Like It, originally staged at the Delacorte in 2017, is part of NYSF's Public Works program, an initiative that draws on various community groups in the five boroughs -- including Brownsville Recreation Center, Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, Center for Family Life, Children's Aid, DreamYard, Domestic Workers United, The Fortune Society, and Resilience Foundation -- training volunteers to seamlessly blend in with the Equity principals; the result is a gorgeous onstage community that faithfully mirrors the rich diversity of New York City. (They also take on most of the minor roles; at the performance I attended, I was especially taken with Alfreda Small, who, as Ada, Orlando's elderly companion, added a welcome, worldly-wise note.)

Following "In Arden" and another, equally beguiling, number, "Under the Greenwood Tree," everyone relaxes into the business of uniting the plot's abundance of wayward lovers. As Rosalind and Orlando, Rebecca Naomi Jones and Ato Blankson-Wood amusingly stumble down a road to romance loaded with obstructions, the biggest being that she is in male disguise, giving him tips on lovemaking. Meanwhile, he afflicts the neighborhood with his hilariously bad versifying: "Are you a doll or a person, Rosalind?/No, you'll never age or start menopausalin'/Cause you're forever twenty-one to me." (What girl could resist that? Most of them, I'll wager.) Blankson-Wood's showstopping moment comes in "For Real," a note-perfect boy band spoof with the actor backed up by a male quartet executing their smoothest 'N Sync moves. Meanwhile, Jones' take-charge Rosalind sets about stage-managing the other love stories, for example, coolly advising one reluctant sweetheart, "You should be thanking God/For sending such a catch/You found a good spot, so park it/Sell when you can, 'cause you're not for all markets."

In the spirit of inclusion, some of these wooings have been given a same-sex twist. Touchstone, Rosalind and Celia's jester (Christopher M. Ramirez), falls for the sincere farmboy Andy (a charming Jonathan Jordan), who schools his would-be swain in the meaning of fidelity. The sweet-natured Silvia (Brianna Cabrera) yearns, unrequitedly, for the faithless Phoebe (Bianca Edwards, swinging her hips and throwing shade with abandon) whose name becomes a watchword for maltreatment in the number "You Phoebe Me." Meanwhile, Celia Idania Quezada) catches the eye of Oliver (Renrick Palmer) Orlando's cruel, controlling brother, who soon repents his ways.

Even in the utopian confines of Arden, not all plotlines are treated equally. Touchstone's comic material falls oddly flat, and Celia and Oliver often seem to be lost in the shuffle. But Taub's numbers constitute a delightful procession of set pieces showcasing the characters getting in the way of their own happiness. The songwriter has a full range of pop, jazz, and funk styles at her fingertips, yet she uses them not parodically, for easy laughs, but to explore her characters. Even "For Real," which doubles as sketch comedy, tells you something about Orlando's cluelessness when it comes to love.

Woolery, aided by choreographers Sonya Tayeh and Billy Griffin, keeps the action hopping without pushing for laughs. As mentioned, the show looks great, especially in the finale when Sosa rolls out a knockout of a wedding ensemble for Jones. The sound design by Sun Hee Kil is as natural and transparent as it gets in the Delacorte. And the suddenly ubiquitous James Ortiz has provided a small menagerie of puppets, including a couple of deer, a lion, and -- what every Eden needs -- a menacing serpent.

In a way, this As You Like It contains, in a single production, everything about the Public Theater: the devotion to Shakespeare; the knack for social commentary; the ardent interest in new writing, especially innovative musical theatre; and the outreach to the widest possible community. And, in its firm belief that an earthly paradise is within our grasp if only we come to our senses and love one another, it recalls such NYSF landmarks as Hair and the musical Two Gentleman of Verona. At the same time, it is thoroughly of today. Even with its poignant finale, which, in a touching coup de théâtre, completes Jaques' account of time's passage, it is a vision of hope, an invitation to joy. It's a summer tonic, just the thing our fractious world needs. --David Barbour