Escape From Court

Shakespeare often has segues that shift the theatre of activity out into the woods.  Certainly in a “Mid Summer Night’s Dream”, Puck is out tricking folks in the woods for most of the production.  Dunsinane is brought up and into the production in “Macbeth.”  And in “As You Like It” the forest, like the rest of the world, is a stage for Olando and Rosiland to escape from court and make merry. 

I suppose there are more than a thousand places to see the man from Stratford on Avon’s works produced out of doors, across the United States this summer.  We were fortunate to once again be able to take in a production of “As You Like It” at the Boscobel estate near Garrison, New York.

The grounds are designed like an Italian villa with fruit trees, an herb garden and open before the home to an astounding view down over acres of marshland out towards a bend in the Hudson River and over to West Point.  Metro North trains are visible riding below, through the swamp.  I’ve ridden that a thousand times but had never considered this view.  They say MacArthur’s mom Pinky had an apartment across from his military academy dormitory at West Point where she could keep an eye on him.  With the right telescope this perch would have served her well.

And its always light out when show time arrives and we settle into our seats in the round.  And soon the sun is setting, unstoppably, while actors march across the lawn in the dusk, adding hundreds of yards of depth to the imagination.  And, as happens, it gets dark.  After intermission torchlight appears off in the distance and real stars in the sky and it is all rather easy to believe we are in the forest with the players, for just this evening.  

My kids want to know when it will be over.  “It’s a comedy.  Wait till everyone is smiling.”