AS YOU LIKE IT
CRITICS CHOICE
"The most profound art gambols in "As You Like It' which opens the Independent Shakesepeare Company's summer season of free performances at Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood. This full-hearted al fresco reading of William Shakesepeare's deathless comedy has an irresistible sparkle.
Founded in 1998, the company harks back to touring RenaisanceTroupes. It is actor-managed and ensemble oriented, and its goal is to illuminate the Bard’s greatest works through textual attention and minimum technical means. In “As You Like It,” which probably first appeared in 1599, it fulfills its mission and surpasses it.
As we settle in our seats and and blankets before an open platform--it gets cold, so dress accordingly--the cast offers a guitar-accompanied air and plucks the Venetian masks that stud the stage like flowers.
the exit of most of the actors leaves estranged brothers Orlando (the superb Sean Pritchett) and Oliver (quietly vital Hayden Adams) glaring at each other. Oliver departs the stage kicking over a bucket of apples, which launches Orlando’s “As I remember, Adam” to the family’s aging servant (the hilarious David Nathan Schwartz), and As You Like It’s journey to reconciliation in the Forest of Arden takes flight.
Co-directors Sanford Robbins and Melissa Chalsma, whose exquisite Rosalind is a performance to treasure, honor the play’s populist roots without slighting its wordplay and romance. The forest denizens and the courts of usurping Duke Frederick and his exiled brother register through adroit placement and Rachel Ford Pritchett’s witty costumes, and narrative development is crystal clear.
Orlando and Rosalind’s relationship unfolds with infinite delicacy, while the rustic complications play with immense gusto. Double-cast as Frederick and the senior Duke, Joseph Culliton creates two different people without blinking. Luis Galindo shifts from foppish Le Beau to a Corin transplanted from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone.
This is a side-splitting “As You Like It.” The wholly engaging ensemble tickles our ribs at the wrestling match between Orlando and Charles (Erik Mathew) and touches on every level of comedy thereafter.
Typifying this range are the priceless Celia of Andrea Gwynnel Morgan and David Melville’s hysterical Touchstone, whose slapstick courtship of Audrey (Jennifer Mefford) and repeated encounters with dung are uproarious.
As melancholy Jacques, the terrific Freddy Douglas invests “All the world’s a stage” with wry subtlety. The gender-confusion of Rosalind’s male disguise builds to a marvelous letter scene, with shepherdess Phebe (Aisha Kabia) up to the mischief.
Every summer brings quality open-air Shakespeare to Southern California, and this year is no exception. This year is no exception. The season has already produced a towering “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum that stand as a benchmark for that venerated theater. this eloquent “As You Like It” is equally a watershed for the Independent Shakespeare Company."
David C. Nichols, Los Angeles Times
PICK OF THE WEEK
"The Independent Shakespeare Company proves it can muster the wit, verve, lightness of touch, and cheeky irreverence to make Shakespeare’s comedy genuinely funny. Two performances define and dominate it: Melissa Chalsma’s Rosalind is beautiful, sweet, clever and sometimes zany, finding comedy in unexpected places. In her scenes with her handsome, hunky Orlando (Sean Pritchett), the chemicals sizzle and charm. David Melville transforms the clown Touchstone into a deadpan star turn. He’s already shown us an antic Hamlet, but here’s anarchic, wielding his jester’s cap and bells in ways that verge on pornographic. Directors Sanford Robbins and Chalsma provide the fast-paced staging and the large cast lends admirable support. Andrea Gwynnel Morgan’s Celia is a fine foil for Rosalind, Hayden Adams is appropriately sinister as Oliver, and Freddy Douglas is unexpectedly elegant as melancholy Jacques, while Jennifer Mefford and Aisha Kabia score as sluttish Audrey and love-lorn Phebe, respectively. Rachel Ford Pritchett’s excellent no-period costumes add exotic touches as needed. Best of all, the show is free--but make reservations. And bring a blanket."
Neal Weaver, LA Weekly, July 7-13, 2006
HAMLET
CRITIC'S PICK
"Here’s one for the books: an outdoor production by Independent Shakespeare Co., relying primarily on the actors and their voices to tell the story....Under the direction of Cassandra Johnson, the actors have egress through the audience; we also can glimpse them walking to and from the backstage area, which gives the piece a trusting, welcoming feel.
"The stage looks good no matter the conditions, whether in bright setting sun or under the relatively simple but extremely effective lighting of consultant Bosco Flanagan...The use of a fight choreographer (Roy Guill) and movement adviser and coach (J’aime Morrison) shows that this company recognizes the usefulness of such skills. Indeed, we are privileged to watch fascinating movement, particularly by Japan-born actor Taka Yamamoto, triple-cast as Francisco, Reynaldo, and a Player.
"Other intriguing and adept actors include Hayden Adams as a tenderly youthful Laertes; Michael Keith Morgan as an edgy Claudius; Sean Pritchett as a companionable Horatio; and Darrel Guilbeau and Matt Hurley as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The supremely talented David Nathan Schwartz plays Polonius with wonderful high comedy....Likewise, the dewy Melissa Chalsma skillfully renders Ophelia...Johnson gives the actors context but does not over-direct.
"But what makes this production even more remarkable, indeed a lifetime opportunity, is the performance of David Melville as Hamlet. This Hamlet is for real. No breast-beating, no somber meditations, no visible introspection. He’s primarily personable; he’s also hugely funny, then he’s petulant and snide, then giddy, then appallingly callow. Melville makes him the period’s equivalent of a teenage rock star. This Hamlet faces various deaths--other than his father’s--with the subtext, “What-evurrh.” Best of all, language falls conversationally from Melville’s lips, so every line reveals more than we have dreamt of in our philosophies.
"This Hamlet raises the bar. And that’s a mighty high bar to touch."
Dany Margolies, Back Stage West (Los Angeles)
"Compulsive ardor gives the charge to "Hamlet," which opens the Independent Shakespeare Company's third season of free productions in Barnsdall Park. This energetic alfresco reading catches the conscience of the Bard's immortal Danish fracas, its trippingly spoken ensemble ignited by David Melville's remarkable hero.
"Since 1998, Independent Shakespeare Company has operated a modern variation on the actor-managed troupes of the Renaissance. On a bare stage, with minimal props and costumes, the company combines keen acting insights with the entertainment values that Elizabethan audiences took for granted.
"Under Cassandra Johnson's direction, this "Hamlet" takes little for granted, cutting Fortinbras while retaining Shakespeare's trumps. From first sighting of the Ghost (Danny Campbell) to final duel, this tale of royal treachery and revenge receives as much invention and humor as authenticity permits.
"Melville is wonderfully vital, with eloquent word pointing and physical choices. His colleagues are impressively spontaneous, starting with Melissa Chalsma's mercurial Ophelia, arresting in the mad scene. Michael Keith Morgan's brazen Claudius dovetails with Bernadette Sullivan's sympathetic Gertrude. David Nathan Schwartz is a potent pedant of a Polonius. As Laertes, Hayden Adams has youthful zeal, and Sean Pritchett subtly underplays Horatio. Campbell, Jennifer Mefford, Darrel Guilbeau, Matt Hurley and Taka Yamamoto relish their multiple roles...."
David C. Nichols, The Los Angeles Times
"Bleach-haired David Melville’s gorgeous interpretation of the great Dane is that of a Brighton Pier standup on antidepressants. His blustering mockery of mum (Bernadette Sullivan) and Uncle Claudius (Michael Keith Morgan) seems relentless, until the shards of his psychological collapse cut through arteries of pain that feel horrific in contrast. Cassandra Johnson directs an elemental production in the elements, assuring that almost no consonant goes unheard. This, without mikes, is a deeply satisfying testament to the company’s classical and vocal training. The need for size inspires bold acting choices, as lucid and refreshing as the breezes that kept slicing across the knoll...This is a lovely, freewheeling way to receive the play."
Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly
RICHARD III
"In the Independent Shakespeare Company production, performed at Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood, this contemplation on evil really does feel frothy. Lorenzo Gonzalez's Richard expresses such glorious glee in his evil deeds that you root to see him succeed and take a surprising joy in his bloody ascent.
"It's an entertaining approach, and Gonzalez — with a pretty terrific cackle — proves a zesty companion...The 12 supporting players, who play multiple roles, are likable, and it's awfully easy to be drawn in by the company's bare-bones approach to Shakespeare, valuing accessibility above all. If the company can make "Richard III" feel almost family friendly, then it certainly has a lot to offer."
Steven Oxman, The Los Angels Times
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
"...Invoking the tradition of Rennaissance traveling players, ISC uses a minimum of theatrical flourishes. The simple props, and Talin Mardirosian's often witty costumes, serve only to advance the storytelling.
The ISC troupers have a crowd-pleasing, commedia-infleccted flair and a firm, supple grasp of the Bard's language...
Under Chalsma's ensemble-focused direction, this "Two Gents" raises some well-earned smiles of a summer night."
Rob Kendt, Los Angeles Times
"…how refreshing it is to witness Independent Shakespeare Company's rendition of the Bard's poetically pointed tribute to love. Textual reverence for the play is always at the forefront, even when this Elizabethan-like traveling troupe steps out of time to skewer high-tech theatricality."
Dink O’Neill, Back Stage West (Los Angeles)
HENRY V
"The Independent Shakespeare Co. illuminates Shakespeare by imaging corollaries to Elizabethan performance conditions, recalling the actor-managed troupes of yore by way of commedia dell’arte…A marvel of ensemble unity…joining discursive ease with fidelity to meter. The lighting is unaltered throughout, placing focus squarely on the actors. The minimalist props and costumes are unerringly apt."
David C. Nichols, Los Angeles Times
"The much traveled, actor-managed Independent Shakespeare Co. offers an impressively literate and energetic production of Henry V....
"Working with just the lighting at hand and a hint of costuming, the ensemble takes on the attributes of a Renaissance commedia dell’arte troupe of players whose mission it is to tell this tale as fervently as possible, emphatically hitting all the dramatic and comedic hot spots, while allowing the audience’s imagination to fill in the environmental frou-frou."
Julio Martinez, Daily News (Los Angeles)
MACBETH
"Staged and performed with passion and simplicity by the ISC’s seven-person ensemble, the show crackles with excitement and energy…it is almost certainly the very best Macbeth I have ever seen....
"These folks are doing Shakespeare the way it should be done, focusing squarely on what makes these plays great (i.e., the text) and leaving most of the rest to the audience to conjure in their mind’s eye."
Martin Denton, New York Theatre Experience
"...moments of genius in the artistic direction."
Siobhan Murphy, Metro ( London)
"…the dialogue comes zinging out precise and powerful, burning itself across our minds....
"…one can only marvel at the versatility and artistry of this young troupe…This is Shakespeare stripped down to the core – raw gritty, powerful, naked and nervy… Shakespeare at its best."
Simon Harrison, Morning Star ( London)