STAGE REVIEW : AN ‘AS YOU LIKE IT’ WHERE THE SET’S THE THING

For the early portion of “As You Like It” at the South Coast Repertory, the part that takes place in the Court of Duke Frederick, we’re given a dark, conspiratorial look close to Frederick’s stone-cold heart. Cliff Faulkner’s set has a High Renaissance aspect--black marble inlaid with gold, a setting for wealthy intrigue. The look is echoed in Shigeru Yaji’s black-and-gold costumes. Together they suggest Puccini’s Japan, where Madam Butterfly’s heart is plunged into darkness.

For the Forest at Arden, where the banished and the discontented eventually congregate (Frederick is not a congenial man), the look is open and winter bright. Fat snowflakes drift down in lovely silence among stalactites of diaphanous white silk, which radiate with blue-green light evoking an azure, pacific calm. Chuck Estes’ synthesized music underscores the moods of playfulness and rue. At one point, the whole set dances in waltz time.

That’s the trouble with this production. After a while you stop wondering what the players will make of their dilemmas and begin anticipating just how the set is going to react to the latest bit of business, or what new interesting costume will crop up. It’s as though Town & Country has set a chez Frederick’s theme issue in the Forest of Arden.

Some of the actors get through it with distinctive performances, but many more don’t. Most are stuck in a turgid frieze. And director Lee Shallat has allowed enough diversity of accents to crop up (John-David Keller’s Le Beau is Anglican, for example, while Don Took’s Corin sounds like a rough, Old West mountain man) so that the one thing that might save us from indifferent character--the music of Shakespeare’s language--is missing as well. It seems an unwritten axiom of the theater that if actors don’t relate to one another linguistically (unless they’re not supposed to), their characters tend not to relate either.

A principal drawback is Monique Fowler’s Rosalind. Rosalind is one of Shakespeare’s most complex heroines--she has neither Beatrice’s bristling self-assurance in “Measure for Measure” nor Viola’s insouciance in “Twelfth Night.” As a proud, beautiful courtier, dressing up as a boy in the forest is not something she prefers to do. And her skeptical protestations of love guard a heart already lost to puerile Orlando. Fowler has a certain amount of technical assurance, but her compass is small and tight. This is not an expansive Rosalind, setting the rules of the game in order to bait a trap; this Rosalind is agitated and uncertain, and her voice is given to sharpness. When a Shakespeare heroine hasn’t a voice, you’re in for a long night.

What success this production enjoys rests in the performances of Robert Machray’s Touchstone and Jonathan McMurtry’s Jacques. This Touchstone is big, sloppy and disreputable, with a wheezy potato face that pouts easily but lights up just as quickly when Audrey the goatherd (well played by Cheryl Crabtree) is around. There are suggestions of Falstaff in this character, an unhappy introspection cloaked in buffoonery.

McMurtry’s Jacques is perfectly of a piece, and well spoken. Where most actors like to play up Jacques’ dark, brooding nature, McMurtry passively exudes a melancholy that drains Jacques like a spiritual abscess. It’s a faintly bemused, sardonic, pale-for-weariness performance that describes a character whose worldliness has carried him nearly beyond hope.

Nearly, but not completely. When at the end he asks confirmation that the wicked duke has “put on a religious life and thrown into neglect the pompous court,” and says, “To him will I. Out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and learn’d,” you sense he’s willing to take one more gamble on Deeper Meaning.

Some of the smaller pleasures of this production include Keller’s somewhat put-upon Le Beau, Carl Reggiardo’s masculine elegance as Duke Senior Kristen Lowman’s unabashedly calculating Phebe and a devastatingly funny few seconds of Hal Landon Jr.’s vicar Martext (though his Frederick seems more churlish than mean spirited). Ron Boussom is a touch exclamatory as Oliver, Orlando’s brother at court, but there’s a moment when he puts on a top coat that tells us everything about how a nobleman fills out with sartorial splendor.

David Chemel does as well as he can with Orlando, the brave lad dumbstruck with love, but it isn’t much. Rosalind would have told him, “Looks aren’t everything.” But nobody’s listening here.

‘AS YOU LIKE IT’

William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” directed by Lee Shallat. Setting, Cliff Faulkner. Costumes, Shigeru Yaji. Lighting, Peter Maradudin. Music, Chuck Estes. With David Chemel, William Kerr, Ron Boussom, Greg Atkins, Larry Drake, Anni Long, Monique Fowler, Robert Machray, John-David Keller, Hal Landon Jr., Carl Reggiardo, Benjamin Stewart, Don Took, John Ellington, Jonathan McMurtry, Cheryl Crabtree, Kristen Lowman, Jonathan Palmer, William Bartrum, Robert Blomgren, Ken Jensen, Pat Massoth, Nigel Neale, Jeff Newman.

Performances at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, (714) 957-4033, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m., through March 30.