Fools in the Forest
Created and directed by Natalie Kane, from text by William Shakespeare
94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC
August 3-16, 2024
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| Amy Pan, Christine Vapsva, Rebecca-Anne Whittaker, Maya Barbon. Photo by Natalie Kane |
The character of Touchstone is the official fool, so to speak, in William Shakespeare's
As You Like It, an instance of the courtly wise fool whose license allows him to satirize and question the society around him. In adapting
As You Like It, creator and director Natalie Kane's
Fools in the Forest adds to the number of (figurative) fools while subtracting much else, imagining a version of the play in which Celia and Rosalind never rejoin Duke Senior and his fellow exiles in the forest of Arden and which does not center heterosexual romance. Aside from Touchstone (Abby Kastenberg),
Fools in the Forest retains from its Shakespearean source text only melancholy courtier Jaques (Maya Barbon), who is impressed enough by Touchstone to become a would-be fool herself; shepherdess Phebe (Amy Pan), more interested in freedom and friendship than in romance; and Rosalind (Rebecca-Anne Whittaker) and Celia (Christine Vapsva), who together arguably embody Puck's evaluation in another Shakespearean comedy: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Fools in the Forest is currently part of FRIGID New York's 2024 Little Shakespeare Festival, the theme of which is "Camaraderie and Community," elements unquestionably highlighted in this stimulating adaptation.
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Abby Kastenberg and Christine Vapsva. Photo by Natalie Kane |
While
Fools in the Forest uses the text of
As You Like It, it freely and inventively remixes that text. The first few minutes, for instance, meld lines from different acts as Touchstone literally carries Celia to Rosalind, cleverly playing on her quip to Celia that she "had rather bear with you than bear you" and the three discuss their flight into the forest. Elsewhere, Phebe (taking the place of
As You Like It's Amiens) and her guitar serenade a discontented Jaques (one of several moments allowing Pan to show off her musical talent). Members from these two groups encounter one another, missives attached to trees–no longer paeans about Rosalind penned by Orlando–come into play, and Celia, in a well-played moment from Vapsva, becomes legitimately angry with Rosalind, who has "misused our sex" in a mocking speech about women and love, and storms off. By the end of the play, some bonds are formed and others are affirmed, even intensified, as communality and different modes of love take the place of
As You Like It's concern with heterosexual marriage and the related institution of inheritance. Ultimately, this particular forest of fools is left with the realization that the courtly world that they have left–or, in Phebe's case, never experienced–may not be worth any of them returning to at all.
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| Christine Vapsva and Rebecca-Anne Whittaker. Photo by Natalie Kane |
Fools in the Forest presents us with intriguing new perspectives on and through its characters and the ideas with which they engage. The performances feed into and are fed into by this freshness, with Kastenberg's lively Touchstone and Barbon's intermittently enthusiastic Jaques impressing as relatably human, including in Barbon's expressive delivery of the well-known "seven ages of man" monologue (and how these characters are foregrounded helps create the room for this to occur). Whittaker and Vapsva render Rosalind and Celia a well-matched pair of assertive women, and Pan lends Phebe a groundedness that contrasts her to the forest's other fool, literal and otherwise. If we are to judge by the well-paced, fun, and funny Fools in the Forest, motley is indeed "the only wear."
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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