In pastoral comedy ‘As You Like It,” APT stages tangled tongues and trees

By Lindsay Christian for The Cap Times | June 18, 2018

To paraphrase the fool in “As You Like It,” there may be much to learn from “if.”

Shakespeare’s fizzy pastoral comedy, running in repertory through Oct. 7 at American Players Theatre, takes us to a forest full of people going out on a limb. They may find wisdom in the woods — “tongues in trees” and sermons in stones — but the branches are full of “ifs.”

If a duke banishes a niece from his kingdom, he might lose his daughter as well.

If a woman trades her bustle for a boy’s pants and cap, she may have to pretend less than she thought she would.

If a man falls too in love with love, he could miss the woman herself standing in front of him.

Meanwhile, we in the audience might find that a fast-talking jester with a Wildean sense of humor and a dour poet writing odes to a dying deer have something essential in common.

Read the full review here!