As he likes it

>> Joel Fishbane puts a musical twist on a Shakespeare classic

SINGING SHAKESPEARE: Charles Bender and Patricia Summersett

by AMY BARRATT

“There are three things that never have to happen on stage,” declares Joel Fishbane. They are, according to this playwright, artistic director and jack of all theatre-related trades, “screaming, crying and nudity.”

So we know what not to expect from Pumpkin Theatre’s As You Like It (opening tonight with Fishbane at the helm), but what can we expect from this company’s first foray into the world of Shakespeare? We can say with some certainty that it will be different from anything the eight-year-old company has done before. Considering that Pumpkin’s last four shows were a Woody Allen-esque existential comedy, a bedroom-to-courtroom drama, a farce and a musical.

Fishbane gives a simple explanation for his company’s eclecticism: “I produce the shows I’d like to see. As You Like It is one of my favourites, and it’s hardly ever done.” Hardly ever done straight anyway. Many directors feel a need to update Shakespeare to our own time, or another historical period, but not Fishbane. “The first question most of the actors had was, what are we doing to it?” he says. His answer was “nothing.”

Although he calls it an adaptation, Fishbane is doing the play more or less as the Bard intended, with allowances for today’s shorter attention span. He has moved some scenes around and cut some minor characters (even so, this is a big show for a small company—nine actors play 15 parts), but the biggest change is the songs. Inspired by the incidental songs contained in Shakespeare’s original, Fishbane saw an opportunity to make music a bigger element in the production. He hired local composer Nick Carpenter (Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque) to write original music.

“In the text,” says Fishbane, “it’s sometimes really obvious that the reason there’s a song is that Rosalind has a costume change.” While he obviously has a fondness for certain clunky Shakespearean conventions—he insisted on keeping all the “look, who comes here?” moments—in this case, he saw an opportunity to use songs to help tell the story and comment on it.

But hold on. Does this mean that—in direct contradiction of what I said just a couple of inches ago—Pumpkin Theatre is in fact producing its second musical in a row? Don’t suggest that to Charles Bender, who was one half of the cast of last fall’s completely sung The Last Five Years. His bio for As You like It, in which he plays Orlando, reads, in part, “He is very happy that this production does not require him to sing.” The music in this show is all performed a cappella by a quartet of singing actors. Those who objected to the headsets used in The Last Five Years will be pleased to know there are no mics this time. There’s also no dancing.

There we go again, defining the show by what it isn’t, instead of by what it is. What it is: a classic Shakespearean comedy, with all of the cross-dressing, cases of mistaken identity and love at first sight that that implies.

Love, by the way, is the one thing that unites all of Pumpkin’s disparate projects. They may not be happy ones, Fishbane points out, but every show he’s done is a love story.

Every one is also a story he loves.

As You Like It, April 19–May 5
at Mainline Theatre (3997 St-Laurent),
8 P.M., $12/$15