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Basically every Shakespeare play has been set in basically every time period for no apparent reason. But with its production of As You Like It, Speculative Drama does pretty much the opposite—the time period seems intentionally nondescript. Some of the costumes are vaguely Victorian, others are explicitly modern. The set, too, is practically blank: just a crate in the middle of the stage and a plain black-curtain backdrop.
The bare-bones production suits the subject matter: exiled courtiers soaking up the freedom of their banishment to the Forest of Arden. Rosalind (Caitlin Lushington) dresses as a man for her voyage to the forest, accompanied by her cousin Celia (Megan Skye Hale) and the court jester Touchstone (Sean Bowie). When Rosalind's crush, Orlando (Tim Fodge), shows up in Arden too, a gender-bending love triangle ensues.
Lushington's performance is wide-eyed and emphatic; she makes all kinds of strange, expressive noises, and at one point literally cartwheels out of Orlando's arms. The goofiness might seem over the top if she didn't have such a charismatic character to play. The unabashed, giddily feminine orchestrator of much of the plot, Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's most enthralling characters, and Lushington does her justice.
The biggest creative license the production takes is with Jaques (Zed Jones), who's typically Arden's grumbly killjoy. In this production, he turns most of his lines into double entendres and wears a constant flirty smile. There are times when it feels like some of Jaques' depth is lost (like during his "all the world's a stage" speech), but it's entertaining and, in general, makes sense. Adam (Chris Porter) laughs at Orlando's jokes when he's starving to the point of collapse, Celia and Rosalind gleefully plan their banishment, and Jaques gets off on misery.
The actors in this production exude the play's free-for-all ethos without the help of overly arty production. That ethos is perhaps best summed up by the epilogue Rosalind delivers, which loosely paraphrased and translated from Elizabethan English, can be summed up as this: Everybody go make out.
SEE It: As You Like It plays at the Steep and Thorny Way to Heaven, Southeast 2nd Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard, thesteepandthornywaytoheaven.com. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, through Nov. 26. $10-$22.
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