Theater amid the trees

Shakespeare's As You Like It is a pastoral comedy exploring the stark contrast between dangerously politicized city life (under a paranoid, usurping duke) and bucolic country life (where the exiled rightful duke enjoys a gentle campout à la Robin Hood, and love blossoms between young couples).

Director Edward Morgan sets the tale in America’s gritty Industrial Age in the early 1900s. The city scenes feature clanking machinery and factory workers in sooty clothes, plus industrial barons wearing formal black. The country scenes are theoretically set in the Adirondack Mountains—but they could have been placed more locally in the Lake Tahoe summer estates built by San Francisco tycoons of that era (palatial “cottages” now preserved at the Tallac Historic Site).

Morgan includes the American entertainment of that era, including barbershop vocal harmony sung around a campfire, instead of Shakespeare's “hey, nonny nonny” songs. But the text is all Shakespeare's: Veteran actor David Anthony Smith (as Jacques) scores a direct hit with the famous “All the world's a stage” soliloquy (earning a nice round of spontaneous applause on opening night). Betsy Mugavero (Rosalind) has a lovely balance of energy, intelligence and nerve—she's dressed like a suffragette (and later, a clever boy), but she's more interested in romancing young Orlando (a buff Torsten Johnson) than in any social crusade. Dustin Tucker presents the clown touchstone as a smirking vaudeville tap dancer and comedian.

There are 13 Actors' Equity Association actors in the cast, and professional designers handling the costumes, music, sets and sound. And unlike some festival shows that feel a tad underrehearsed on opening night, this one is as smooth as silk—little wonder, since the production originated in April in Cleveland, then ran during June at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, then came to Tahoe with virtually the same cast. All the kinks have been worked out. And the lakeside amphitheater, with the breezes off the water and the moon rising during the show, adds a natural bonus as well.