BRATTLEBORO — The final production of Vermont Theatre Company's 30th anniversary season is “As You Like It.”
A pastoral comedy, “As You Like It” has been called Shakespeare's most charming and most frivolous play. The story revolves around animosity between Duke Senior and her younger brother, Duke Frederick, who forces Duke Senior to flee and seek refuge in the Forest of Arden.
Once there with her family and followers, love blooms, people sing and dance, and the play ends in generosity, love, reconciliation, and everyone getting the ending he likes, be it happy, contentious, melancholy, or even monastic.
The saying goes nowadays, “It's all good.” Shakespeare would have said, it's as you like it.
In VTC's production, director Adrienne Major has set the play in our time, more or less, to emphasize both the constraint and artifice in the usurper Duke Frederick's court. Thus, the costumes for Act 1 are rigidly monochromatic and restricting.
All this changes for Duke Senior's court when they escape to Arden Forest and mingle with the locals. The characters leave their current reality behind, escaping from constraint by running off to a medieval faire.
The cast features Veda Crewe, Robert Wellington, Katy Emond, Marion Major, Cristen Rosinski, Skyler Heathwaite, Josh Emond, Arthur Pettee, Jason Guerina, Elizabeth MCollum, Emma Moyna, Tyler Latulippe-Haselton, Sean Whelan, and Mike Jerald.