"As You Like It" by Brave Spirits

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I want to support local theater, and lately I've seen a number of shows. However, I frequently end up disappointed: the stories are usually weird, depressing, or both. For example, I saw "Separate Rooms" by the 4615 Theatre Company a few weeks ago, and it was awful. The acting was bad, the story made no sense, AND I sat on an opened safety pin that was stuck in my chair. Hmpf.

After that experience, I told myself that the next play I saw would have to be something I had already heard of. So when I saw a deal for tickets to see Brave Spirits' "As You Like It" on TodayTix, I figured I couldn't go wrong. A Shakespeare romantic comedy: who doesn't like that?

I have never read this play, nor had I ever seen it performed, so I was excited to experience such a classic. I realized that I did know parts of it from pop culture. The quote, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players," is from this play, and in the movie Never Been Kissed, Drew Barrymore's character reads about Rosalind and Orlando. And because Shakespeare uses many of the same themes and plot lines in his plays, I felt very familiar with the jokes around mistaken identities and lovers meeting in forests (think A Midsummer Night's Dream).

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I thought the play was well-cast, and the actors were quite talented. Farrell Parker and Rebecca Speas, pictured above, played the cousins Rosalind and Celia, and their on-stage chemistry was very believable. Ben Peter was a great Orlando (such a cutie!), and Megan Reichelt played her two male roles quite well (and I knew I recognized her from somewhere: she was in a Flying V play I saw a few years ago). A number of the actors had good singing voices, and they had great timing for their jokes. And while I thought some of the side-romances were a bit unnecessary, that's how Shakespeare wrote the story, so oh well.

Touchstone's fling with Valley girl Audrey was a little silly and didn't add anything to the story. Image found here.

Occasionally the actors broke the fourth wall and interacted with the audience. Those sitting in the front received programs like you might at a wedding, and I was handed one of the love notes Orlando leaves in the forest for Rosalind:

When you smile at me, I lose myself
You give me this feeling that makes
me overwhelmed. When your hand
is in mine, I totally feel fine,
And that's the reason I had to make
you mine. 

I really enjoyed this play, but my main complaint is that it's a bit long. And not only that, but the second act is longer than the first! Usually you're guaranteed that the second half will be shorter, so when the first act was exactly an hour, I thought for sure we would be done by 10:15 at the latest. But no: the second act was nearly 90 minutes long itself! It was late, I was tired, and I was getting so antsy that I actually pulled the script up on my phone so I could follow along and see how close we were to the end. So steel yourself if you plan to see it (it's playing through April 27th in Alexandria) for a long (but fun!) night. (Actually, looking at the website now, it does say the play is two-and-a-half hours long...)

Here's a review by the DC Theatre Scene if you're interested:
https://dctheatrescene.com/2019/04/13/as-you-like-it-review-to-brave-spirits-show-we-say-we-do/