Review: As You Like It & Macbeth | Trinity Shakespeare Festival | Texas Christian University

Fort Worth — Shakespeare’s works are densely populated with memorable, strong male leads, the names of which are usually immortalized right in the title of the play. Hamlet, Othello, Henry IV and V, etc. It’s a real boy’s club to be sure.

Given the heavy emphasis on testosterone, particularly since all roles were originally played by men, it’s easy to lose sight of the many strong female characters the Bard created.

These women run the gambit and perhaps no two women more aptly represent the two sides of the spectrum than two central figures of Trinity Shakespeare Festival’s 2011 season: As You Like It’s Rosalind (Trisha Miller) and Macbeth’s Lady Macbeth (Elizabeth Mason).

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In As You Like It, a pastoral comedy, Rosalind is the daughter of a Duke Senior (Richard Haratine) who has been deposed by his brother, Duke Frederick (Brandon Sterrett). Facing persecution, she takes on a male persona, and flees with her cousin, Celia (Elizabeth Mason), and the clown, Touchstone (David Coffee), into the Forest of Arden.

A romantic comedy in that it’s more of a crowd-pleaser than most of Shakespeare’s other works, As You Like It eschews grand allegorical messages in favor of mostly simple love stories.

The only truly dynamic character is Rosalind, who, though her life is at risk, stages a daring escape, takes up residence in the forest, and plays hard-to-get with the dashing yet sincere Orlando (Jonathan Brooks).

Living up to its billing as a crowd favorite, Trinity’s production fulfills the promise made by the title, delivering a show acutely tuned to audience expectations.

Now 400 years on from the death Shakes, one stalwart quality of his writing is its near indecipherability. Though it’s usually fairly simple to glean the general point of the long winded iambic pentameter, there is often much that is lost in translation. For, on top of being a bit long winded and given to verbose explanations of simple things, Shakespeare flat out made up a bunch of words. And though many of his invented words and phrases have naturalized into our language (this particular show is where we get "too much of a good thing" from), there are still instances of head-scratching literary concoctions.

Therefore, there’s an annoying tendency adopted by actors performing Shakespeare who aren’t certain of what exactly they’re saying. Call it "Shakespeare speak."  Or "poetry speak." The tendency to allow the rhythmic nature of the iambic pentameter to lull them into a cadenced delivery, missing the intention of the words in favor of a sing-songy conveyance with the thought that as long as it’s given some inflection, it’ll be relatable. And it’s not.

Despite the complexity of the language, most of what Shakespeare was writing does make perfect sense when delivered the right way. Enter the cast of As You Like It and the direction of T.J. Walsh.

This production is an exemplary case of the possibility for Shakespeare’s odd version of English to make sense. And as much as Walsh’s direction deserves credit, in the end, the actors have to pull it off. And they do.

Particularly enjoyable are Coffee’s Touchstone and Jakie Cabe’s Jaques. Touchstone is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable fools and Coffee’s jovial and beguiling wit gives the audience a glimpse into how Shakespeare intended the character to be played. On the other end of the spectrum, Cabe takes the melancholy Jaques and gives him depth in the glimmer of positivity he gleans from Touchstone. And despite residing in or near the doldrums most of the time, Cabe never allows Jaques to get stale or sullen. Instead, he’s more like the collective conscience. He understands the workings of the world and points it out to those unexcited to hear it. And yet, we do listen. And when he gives the famous "All the world’s a stage…" speech, he has everyone hanging on his every word.

The final note comes in the production design, for Trinity hosts their Shakespeare festival indoors. And while this is a welcome relief from what is already an oppressively hot summer, As You Like It really is a perfect show to present outdoors, as most of the action takes place in nature.

So, how does scenic designer Clare Floyd DeVries solve the conundrum of staging an outdoor play indoors? Simple. Bring nature to the stage. Set against a golden frame backdrop, as if the set is exploding out of a painting, DeVries uses tall tree trunks to frame the action, leaving the middle open but on subtle levels to give the effect of a forest clearing. Aiding DeVries’ brilliantly simple set was Tristan Decker’s lighting design. These two working in conjunction not only create an impressive set but draw the audience into the feeling of being in the forest with the players.

Whether it be Shakespeare or some other oft-performed standard, the true measure of the production is if it they don’t just rest on their laurels and instead choose to challenge themselves to bring a different look to a pieces. Trinity Shakespeare has done that with As You Like It. They’ve taken one of the most crowd pleasing Shakes pieces ever and managed to make it feel fresh and new, just like the lush foliage of the forest they inhabit.

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There are some marriages where you just have to take a step back and wonder, "How did that person ever marry that person?"

Such would be the question when looking at Lord (Haratine) and Lady Macbeth. The Lord is a brave general in faithful service to the Scottish King, Duncan (Coffee). The Lady is a power-hungry villainess bent on conquest.

After receiving a prophecy that he would ascend to the throne by the wickedly seductive trio of witches (Morgan McClure, Kelsey Milbourn and Sophie Smith), Macbeth is persuaded by his wife to murder Duncan, setting off a chain reaction of the most explicit murderous vengeance this side of a Hollywood blockbuster.

As the full title of the play is The Tragedy of Macbeth, it’s easy to guess what the end result is.

As with As You Like It, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s more performed plays. It’s even infamous in theater circles for being cursed and is usually only referred to as "the Scottish play" in hushed tones backstage.

And so, it falls upon Trinity Shakespeare to deliver something fresh and new to the piece, which once again, they do with gusto.

The performances aren’t quite on par with As You Like It. There’s a bit more "Shakespeare speak" and Haratine’s Macbeth sometimes struggles to find consistency in the emotion of his character. Mason’s Lady Macbeth is a diabolically perfect kind of evil with her demur looks belying a vicious streak that would make history’s worst villains stop to take notice.

The real stars of Macbeth, though, are the technical team. The trifecta of scenic designer Brian Clinnin, lighting designer Michael Skinner and composer/sound designer Toby Jaguar Algya create an eerie Scottish highlands atmosphere. The set is of a rock covered clearing, strewn with stumps and puddles, backdropped by a foreboding backlit cave entrance. The entrances and exits from this opening are offsetting and carry heavy dramatic effect. Algya’s battle scene compositions are epic in scope and when combined with Eric Domuret’s fight direction, they give the production a grand cinematic feel.

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In taking on two of the Bard’s more performed, and more popular, pieces, Trinity Shakespeare gave themselves a unique challenge: Take something established and give it a new spin.

The theme of showcasing strong female characters is well-taken and provides a consistent through-line between the two productions.

And it really feels as if the production crews take it upon themselves to raise the bar and, though the festival is safely indoors, attempt to transport the audience into the wilds of nature via design.

It is obvious that not only are the people at Trinity Shakespeare Festival passionate about the Bard’s works, they’re passionate about sharing those works. In these two plays, they’ve found the right balance between the transcendental artistry of the works and the accessibility to audiences.

Or, as is often said about the purpose of Shakes’ famous pastoral comedy, "as you like it."