While most might be familiar with the Shakespearean play As You Like It, the New West theatre group Shadows and Dreams is bringing its own version of it in a brand new production as part of the annual Shakespeare in the Park festival.
The play, originally written in the early 1600s, will be re-imagined as a story set in the 1950s. And a portion of it will feature a countryside setting with actors sporting cowboy hats, said Patricia Ann Brooke, one of the theatre company's founders.
For the group, launched by the Brooke and Elcheshen-Norris families, the play hits a nostalgic note as it was the one they performed in the second year of the Shakespeare in the Park festival in New West — back in 2007.
“My son was two when we did the show,” said Ann Brooke.
“Now he is playing one of the lead characters.”
Almost 16 years have passed since their first As You Like It production; in all these years, the group has kept up the tradition of bringing the legendary playwright's work to the New West stage every summer without fail (except during COVID).
This year is no different.
Recreating a 1950s rom-com
The festival reflects a worldwide tradition. First launched in New York back in 1954, it celebrates the genius of Shakespeare while also making theatre free and accessible for all.
True to its roots, the New West festival is free for anyone to attend under the open sky at Queen’s Park.
While the Shadows and Dreams group has taken the creative liberty to change the timeline and locales of the Shakespearean tale, the dialogues and the theme remain intact.
“A lot of Shakespeare’s comedies are about love and mistaken identity,” said Ann Brooke.
And As You Like It, she said, has a fair share of it.
In the play, Rosalind, a Duke’s daughter is banished into the forest after her dad’s brother steals the land from them and kicks them out of the country. Rosalind dresses herself up as a man while in the forest as a safety measure; when she meets her love, Orlando, she refuses to reveal her identity, and instead continues to interact with him as a man — teaching him how to “woo” his love — Rosalind herself — while dressed as a man.
The play — “full of romance and silly comedy” — is one of the most popular plays of Shakespeare, next to Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, said Ann Brook, who has seen five different productions of As You Like It at the annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the last two decades.
When Shadows and Dreams first performed the play, they set the story in the '60s, depicting the contrast between city and the forest as one between the “Establishment 1960s” and the “Hippies 1960s.”
The upcoming version is set in a traditional 1950s city setting, with the forest being the countryside, she said.
“Everyone sort of has their take on things, like Bard on the Beach (a popular theatre festival in Vancouver) is doing As You Like It this year set in the '60s, with a Beatles-inspired theme,” she added.
“That’s the magic of Shakespeare … You can do almost anything with his plays. And that’s what I love about him.”
Shadows and Dreams Theatre Company will perform their production of As You Like It at 2 p.m. at the Queen’s Park Bandshell on July 29, 30 and Aug. 5 and 6.
