STAGE REVIEW : Sun Shines on Fest / LA’s ‘As You Like It’

Why Shakespeare? Why alfresco? Why in the hot sun?

The answer to the first two questions is because Shakespeare, more than any other writer, seems to have written some terrific plays that do particularly well outdoors. The answer to the third is that as long as you have a 4 p.m. show in August, you’ll have sun, like it or not.

Some colorful tenting provided refuge Saturday from the mid-afternoon heat at the Shakespeare Festival / LA’s presentation of “As You Like It” at Citicorp Plaza. Lively acting, organic settings and a festive atmosphere nicely took care of the rest. Despite temperatures in the upper 80s, no one left. The crowd arranged and rearranged itself under the striped tenting or the nearby trees, but it didn’t walk away.

And for good reason. This year’s “As You Like It” is much closer to how we like it than was last year’s “Comedy of Errors.” Some valuable lessons have been learned. The acting is stronger, the natural environment is used to clever advantage (credit designer Fred M. Duer with providing a “real” Forest of Arden on the Plaza’s own grassy mound peppered with pepper trees), and that modern scourge, the body microphone, is used in its most legitimate setting: the open air, to fight noise from jets, police sirens and traffic. (That was demonstrated Saturday when one or another of the mikes failed; adjustments are still needed here.)

As for the show, the 4-year-old festival delivered a minimally abridged, muscular “As You Like It,” generally respecting of the text if occasionally mush-mouthed (when will otherwise good actors learn that speaking the speech trippingly on the tongue is an active component of the craft?)

The setting, by a large stretch of the geography, is New York City and Yosemite, 1849. Disbelief must be suspended at once if one is to imagine that the scorned Orlando (Rick Najera); his faithful retainer, old Adam (Jack Murdock); the banished Rosalind (Mary Crosby), and her cousin Celia (Rita Wilson) have walked from the former to the latter. Or that Touchstone (a scintillating Lance Davis) has carried their bags all the way. This is the world according to New York: an America without a Midwest.

All in a day’s work for the fairy tale that is “As You Like It,” enchanting at the Plaza, under swaying branches, with Orlando pinning his lovesick poems on the trunks of real trees. Alvah Stanley is a laughing Duke Senior, ruling over a gamely band of Utopia-seeking ex-urbanites, among whom Kevin Bash’s Amiens is the star guitar-twanging cowboy. (Dawn Fintor supplied some highly workable original Western music for the Shakespearean lyrics.)

Somehow, you buy it. There have always been those back-to-nature movements in history, and Yosemite seems a logical escape for this band of exiles in search of satisfactions that upwardly corruptible city life did not provide. The plot complications fit right in, and Tony Pandolfo’s unassuming Jaques is a particularly apt figure: A laid-back John Muir philosophizing aloud among the trees.

Crosby’s Rosalind, though, could use a lot more resolve and tomboyish energy, especially since she is flanked by an uncommonly plucky, amusing and dynamic Celia in Wilson. Najera’s Orlando has all of the winning puppy-dog attributes the role demands, but the actor spoils it by rushing headlong through his words and swallowing too many of them. He should take lessons from Davis, whose Touchstone is a triumph of crisp and smart delivery.

Some of this laxness at the core one must lay at the feet of director Kevin Kelley, who has otherwise supplied the festival with its best show to date. The same seeming inattention has been paid to Ray C. Naylor’s costumes, which are fine for the country, but not nearly fine enough for the city--an odd economy for a show whose only major design expense would seem to be costumes.

Yet, despite the minor unevenness, “As You Like It” is a pleasant way to while away the afternoon or evening. The price is right and the play almost always. If hard wooden bleachers are a problem, bring a pillow.

At Citicorp Plaza, Saturday and Sunday, 4 p.m., with a Friday supper show at 6 p.m. (supper can be bought on the Plaza); Ford’s Theatre in Hollywood Aug. 18-20, 8 p.m.; Long Beach’s Rainbow Lagoon Aug. 26-27, 8:15 p.m. Admission is nonperishable essentials for the needy, with the Vons supermarkets matching the first 10,000 cans of food. Parking, everywhere, is free, but seating is limited and reservations a must: (213) 489-1121.