My Jacques lurking in the background on the left behind Harper Jane's over the top Audrey, and John Hoskings's Touchstone and ??William. I still have a rehearsal note from Dick Spear which says, "Your seven ages speech is very good.--You will be superb as usual. R.S." I thought I had arrived for sure.

REVIEWS:

DETROIT FREE PRESS

Hilberry Troupe Shows the Bard Should Be Fun by Chuck Thurston

Director Richard Spear believes that even Shakespeare's comedy should be fun, so he puts the Hilberry actors through a fast moving version of "As You Like It" with Rosalind as perky as Mary Tuyler Moore and Touchstone, a clown straight out of burlesque. Even mournful Jacques has a spring to his step.

Rosalind doesn't talk much blank verse and wears boy's clothes for most of the play. There's little chance that the always-active Deborah Eckols as Rosalind will fool anyone for very long. Even the love-smitten Orlando would suspect something if he notices how her boy's knickerbocker suit fits her.

The knickers are part of Spear's time shift that puts "As You Like It" somewhere in the late 19th or early 20th Century--with the young ladies becoming beauties out of an impressionist pastoral painting and the men looking like movie bootleggers or flaming youth of the Gatsby era.

The best of all possible never-never lands is enhanced by james A. Hatfield's woodsy set. The Hilberry stage abounds in heavy lumber, so the trees and posts fit in naturally. Columns rise to the top of the stage with gloves suspended from strap-iron filigree. It could be the entrance to a turn-of-the-century amusement park.

"As You Like It" is one of Shakespeare's pet mix-ups. A duke and his courtiers are banished to live in the woods, where they dine off lavish tables with candles and everything.

There is considerable double talk as the various young people pant after each other. A parade of disjointed lovers pursue and is pursued until the witty Rosalind straightens out who belongs to whom including herself. That takes a little doing because at the time everyone, including her father and pining lover thinks she is a boy. It's a delusion further complicated by a shepherdess who also wants to bed down with her, thinking that she is a he.

If the play is not believable, the players are. John Michael Hosking plays Touchstone with long-legged verve waving a top hat with ostrich plumes, tossing in a few magic tricks. Wayne S. Turney gives Jacques a disdainful air and his famous seven ages of man speech is more world-weary than foreboding.