The UCSD theatre and dance department’s production of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” opens at the Mandell Weiss Forum on Feb.3. The humorous spectacle is much more than just a conventional stock comedy about mistaken identity, gender-bending, music and slapstick, and it’s not even set in Elizabethan England.
“We used as our touchstone the ’30s in France between the wars because I was really interested in what was going on in that time economically, but also politically,” said Larissa Kokernot, director and third-year Master of Fine Arts candidate in the directing program. She explained that the aggressive pacifism adopted by France after World War I, which ultimately led the country to fall under German occupation, is similar to the policies of Duke Ferdinand’s court in the play.
“It’s just a really interesting thing to look at when power isn’t asserted in a direct way, but in a kind of sideways way,” Kokernot said. “It feels like the court of ‘As You Like It’ is a very sick, ineffectual court. The Duke banishes everyone, but he doesn’t really do anything except get them out of his court. It’s a very interesting, complicated look at the sickness that’s inherent in that system.”
Kokernot gives the comedy a dramatic context by focusing the play more on the dichotomy between the confined, authoritarian court and the livelier Forest of Arden.
“I was interested in looking at the first part feeling very cold, wintery and court-based, and the second part moving in spring and the other seasons and happening at Arden,” Kokernot said. She received help from Jim Winker, a classic text specialist in the theatre department.
The set is abstract, unobtrusive and simple. The background contains vertical columns made of fabric, which represent the bark of trees, and a platform with a grid in the shape of tree branches attached to the top of it. A circular disk rostrum covered in white sheets serves as the inside of the court. After act one, the sheets come off and the set creatively transforms into a vibrant forest.
“[The play] is very cyclical,” Kokernot said. “It ends in marriage, but it’s very much about the cycles of love and of life, and the kind of bigger picture of that. So where sound and lights will fit in is to help us track that journey through the seasons starting in winter and at the very end, during Rosalind’s epilogue, when leaves are falling and it’s autumn.”
The intrinsic darkness that comes through in the play effectively adds a realistic context for the comedy, making the play more accessible and giving the characters a human dimension. The cast of MFA students and undergrads give poignant and stimulating portrayals. By tapping into lucid emotions, Shakespeare’s words are more comprehensible and moving.
The play runs Feb. 3 through Feb. 12 from Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. with an additional matinee performance on Feb. 5 at 2 p.m.