Theater Review: As You Like It at Los Angeles' A Noise Within

There is order to the universe. Director Michael Michetti assures us of it in the beautiful As You Like It, his debut production at Glendale’s A Noise Within (continuing in repertory through December 2). Setting his production in impressionist France, when art and nature were finding new ways to relate, Michetti shows evidence of the unseen hands that guide us. 

While present, if not predominant, in the scenes at the people’s court (as evidenced by fallen apples that roll into arrangement along an invisible grid), these hands rule the 'natural' world Michetti creates. Here, those who are willing to follow their hearts will wind up arranged into marriage, thanks to Hymen (the acrobatic Andy Butterfield). Though Shakespeare only employs him to handle the play’s final matchmaking, in Michetti’s production this god of marriage is ever present, effecting all sorts of human and natural unity.

Michetti has a really gifted stage actress in Kirsten Potter (also making her A Noise Within debut) as the fair Rosalind. Her every utterance is well articulated while sounding spontaneous. She shows the chemistry from which stars are formed. Complementing her superior sense for language is great physical control and comic instincts. She also seems more than capable, while posing as a male romantic adviser to her own love interest Orlando (Mark Deakins), of hinting at the battle raging between her mind and her heart.

That said, she employs a piercing laugh intended to show Rosalind’s immaturity in love (perhaps sourced in the line “I will laugh like a Hyena”) that seems instead to paint Rosalind as bi-polar. This can’t take away from her top-notch performance, but it seems a choice worth revisiting.

Other standouts in this production are Mark Bramhall, who transforms from French fop to bedraggled farmer; Andrew Ross Wynn, who plays an appropriately hulking Charles the Wrestler as well as a sensitive singer-songwriter in Arden; and Robertson Dean. He gives the dour Jacques the proper aloofness and renders a "Seven Ages" speech with both care and an in-character casualness. Bo Foxworth works hard a creating a period caricature - too hard in his opening scenes. But he settles in fast.

Article Author: Cristofer Gross

Cristofer Gross is a free lance writer on theater and jazz

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