The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is kicking off its 24th season with As You Like It from May 29–June 23, bringing local arts luminaries—and some Gilded Age glitz—to Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park.
The pastoral comedy follows heroine Rosalind and her friends as they are exiled to the Forest of Arden, where they explore new identities, friendships, and romance. Although it’s been 20 years since the festival last staged As You Like It, producing artistic director Tom Ridgely sees it as a perfect fit for the venue.
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The play itself is set in the fictional Arden, which Ridgely says is “a sort of magical other-space” that will imbue the rest of Forest Park on those June nights when the show is running.
Nancy Bell, a prolific and celebrated member of the local theater scene, directs this year’s production. It marks the first time directing on the festival’s main stage for Bell, who’s worked with the festival over the years on a number of projects, including writing for Shakespeare in the Streets and directing the award-winning production Into the Breeches!
Ridgely is particularly excited about Bell’s vision for this oft-produced classic, which includes a Gilded Age setting and new ways to capture the audience’s attention, in addition to the festival’s typical education and engagement efforts.
“She has a way of pulling the community—in this case, all of St. Louis—into the production,” Ridgely says. “She’s doing that with design and casting, and she’s got exciting ideas about how the people in the Glen each night are going to shape what happens on stage.”
One way that Bell is realizing this vision is by collaborating with local singer-songwriter Beth Bombara. Bombara, who released It All Goes Up to positive reviews last summer, composed and will perform a series of new songs for the production.
“In a way, [Bombara is] collaborating with Shakespeare on these songs, because she is writing new music to his words,” Ridgely says. Bombara will perform the new songs as a character in the play, which Ridgely feels is fitting for her warm, honest songwriting.
“I think she’s a perfect fit for this play and Nancy’s vision,” Ridgely says. “We’re really excited to expose [Bombara] to an even wider audience and welcome her many fans to the Glen this summer to see her in a different light.”
Players Gild
As You Like It gets a Gilded Age makeover for the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s 24th season.
One of the big ideas that director Nancy Bell brought to this production of As You Like It is setting it in the Gilded Age. This period of American history, between the 1870s and the 1890s, was marked by post-Reconstruction economic growth, material excess, and political corruption. Ridgely notes that the social climate of the era, especially the active labor and women’s suffrage movements, make it a perfect fit for As You Like It. “It was a time when people were imagining utopias and other ways of living, and that’s exactly what happens in the play,” Ridgely says. “The duke—in our version, the duchess—goes off into the forest, people follow her, and they discover another way of relating to each other that is more authentic and allows them to be who they really are.”
