By Bill Marx

The high spirits and tolerance in this enjoyable production reinforce the director’s claim that this comedy is about expats striving for “a more balanced, egalitarian society.”

As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Directed by Steven Maler. Staged by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company on the Boston Common, through August 10.

In the foreground: Nora Eschenheimer and Michael Underwood in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company production of As You Like It. Photo: Nile Scott Studios

In his director’s notes to the pleasurable Commonwealth Shakespeare production of As You Like It on the Boston Common, founding artistic director Steven Maler writes that this production keys into the “joyful transition” of its “quartet of lovers.” “Not as a return to what was but a new beginning. The forest is a place of evolution.… as we journey with them we move to something hard won: love, connection and community.” Given the current horrific state of affairs, I can see why Maler proposes such an optimistic framework, though this bucolic comedy, while sunny, doesn’t quite fit his description. Clowns Touchstone and Audrey haven’t evolved into their “better selves,” Phoebe and Silvius are most likely headed for a quickie divorce, and Jaques is far from ditching grouchiness for love and kindness. As for hard won, Shakespeare conjured up a happy ending out of the thinnest of air — off-stage, the really bad Duke Frederick — who’s perpetually furious in Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s performance — undergoes a religious conversion. He forsakes his position for a life of contemplation. Exit authoritarian, welcome back to the city the banished bohemians of the Forest of Arden. Yes, a happy ending — but the Bard had to dig deep into a container of fairy dust left over from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this play, Shakespeare celebrates, critiques, and plays with pastoral — and the genre is nothing if not artificial.

That artificiality is nicely reflected in scenic designer Riw Rakkulchon’s colorful background, festooned with overgrown caricatures of flora, and Miranda Giuleo’s amusingly casual costuming. Of course, that doesn’t mean nature can’t be a place that encourages us to know ourselves; for the Bard, that is easier to do in the green world than in an urban jungle.  Performance is key: Rosalind/Ganymede is a virtuoso of transformation, capable of playing a variety of roles, male and female, as she teaches Orlando to woo and advises others to wise up about themselves (“But mistress, know yourself, Down on your knees,/ And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love”). Nora Eschenheimer fares well with one of Shakespeare’s most vivacious, intelligent female characters — she emphasizes the figure’s protean zest, sometimes injecting notes of out-and-out zaniness. My reservation is that, like the rest of the production, the performance tumbles over into farce when it should be more sensitive to nurturing the nuances of romance. It would be more effective if Eschenheimer, as well as the staging machinery around her, slowed down a bit to establish emotional connections — between Orlando and Rosalind, as well as other characters. (An exception is the arrestingly relaxed fishing scene between John Kuntz’s Touchstone and Remo Airaldi’s Corin — see photo below).  Still, Eschenheimer makes for an enticing force of nature.

John Kuntz and Remo Airaldi in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company production of As You Like It. Photo: Nile Scott Studios

As for Michael Underhill, he is not your typical oafish Orlando, but a muscular do-gooder who becomes tongue-tied around his object of affection.  The wrestling scene between Orlando and the professional wrestler, Charles, is staged as a low-budget WWF match. The actor is a convincing grappler. The fight is accented by a bit of camp comic business I have not seen before. Orlando is losing and has, apparently, had his arm dislocated. Rosalind touches the limb and presto! Back it goes into the socket, and back Orlando goes into the ring for the win!

The supporting cast is fine, but Maler’s notion of a wholesale transformation into “better selves” shaves the edges off. Paul Michael Valley’s well-spoken Jaques is a graying misanthrope — perhaps the casting is a comment on generational cynicism? — who comes off as genially contemplative rather than sardonically dismissive. Where is the lash of his dismissive tongue? The Arden dwellers want the grump around — though not Orlando — but he will have none of their community or love. (Jaques chooses religious isolation instead.) Touchstone is a court jester who disdains the bumpkins around him, but we get little of that arrogant haughtiness from Kuntz, who is a funny but resolutely amiable presence. He handles the “horn-beast” monologue with aplomb (“Your If is the only peacemaker. Much virtue in If.” ), but his rendition lacks bite — after all, he is teaching the rubes around him the true “degrees of the lie,” essentially a lesson in what high-class tit-for-tat is all about.

Remo Airaldi’s Corin is a fine “salt of the earth” version of the elderly shepherd — he is not cutely countrified. Brooks Reeves, as Adam, suggests that the loyal geezer of a servant is experiencing — at least as long as the Bard decides to keep him around — “a lusty winter.” As for Amiens, Jared Troilo has a strong singing voice, and he is called on to use it often in the production, usually at a high volume. For me, his vocals could use some softening — cut down on the Broadway blare. And more variety in the music would also be welcome.

I like my stagings of As You Like It to cut against the script’s sanguinity, but the high spirits and tolerance in this enjoyable production supports Maler’s claim that this comedy is about expats striving for “a more balanced, egalitarian society.” A useful vision these days, what with the outbreak of rampant cruelty among so many “hard hearts.”

Editor’s Note: I performed with John Kuntz in the Climate Cabaret: The Warm-up, which I helped to present back in March of this year.

Bill Marx is the editor-in-chief of The Arts Fuse. For over four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online. He has regularly reviewed theater for National Public Radio Station WBUR and The Boston Globe. He created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. In 2007 he created The Arts Fuse, an online magazine dedicated to covering arts and culture in Boston and throughout New England.