AS YOU LIKE IT

The opening of director Karen Carpenter’s vivacious and varied As You Like It at the Old Globe calls to mind a melancholy Shakespeare sonnet. “That time of year thou mayest in me behold” it begins, rounding to the stark image of old age as desolate trees in winter “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”. Carpenter’s staging of this great, glittering comedy is the best work she’s done, superior in casting pacing, comic timing, and insight….diverse yet unified…
Gorgeously detailed Victorian costumes – from the opulence of the women’s court dresses, to Touchstones brilliantly appliquéd clown suit, to the rough wools and hides of the forest men -- create a confident visual coherence we Americans still associate with the Royal Shakespeare Company or London’s Globe or the National Theatre of Great Britain. Many other strengths distinguish this As You Like It. Carpenter and company give the beautiful set pieces in the play their full due.
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union-Tribune

Cleverly transported forward to England's Victorian era, "As You Like It" marks a charming return to the Old Globe this month. Led with a luminous performance by Katie MacNichol as Rosalind, director Karen Carpenter's well-conceived production is funny, lively, fast-moving, colorful and staged with a great eye for the visual. Carpenter moves the story forward into 19th century England, where sensational photographs capture the exploits of the handlebar-moustached Charles the Wrestler; Phebe the shepherdess is Mary from the 1830 nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (complete with bleating wooden lambs); Touchstone becomes a clown from the 1880s-era Drury Lane circus; and the members of the umbrella-bearing court of Duke Frederick glide across the stage like animated figures from a George Seurat painting. But there's so much more to this production than just its feast for the eyes. Carpenter finds new insights in this oft-retold romantic comedy. The best of this summer's Shakespeare offerings, with ample comedy, continuous action and clear, crisp storytelling.
- Pam Kragen, North County Times

It's the summer of love at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park. In Karen Carpenter's staging of "As You Like It," we get a vision of love as most people like it. Carpenter's staging emphasizes the gloom at the beginning of the play, in the troubled court of the usurping duke. Thunderclaps mark the transitions between the early scenes, and a procession of people carrying black umbrellas crosses the stage as if in the last act of "Our Town." The period, as reflected in the costumes and in the employment of the courtier Le Beau as a photographer, is Victorian. This helps suggest the ravages of urban industrialization. As soon as the play enters the countryside, it lightens up. It's winter, but the Duke's exiled followers are playfully throwing snowballs. The pastoral glow reaches its height in the second half, when a handful of little toy lambs lightly baa and serve as steeds for the characters. Touchstone’s original costume is frighteningly inhuman, but he sheds the extreme clown look as he becomes more of a man. Carpenter gives Celia extra dimension in the second half by giving her a deer dream that could be interpreted as vaguely sexual — as if to show that Celia, like her cousin, is thinking about sex, though her sexuality is deeply repressed.
--Don Shirley, L. A. Times