Gallery: As You Like It

Miriam A. Laube as Rosalind in the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of As You Like It. Note the shadowy leaves behind her--the simple set suggests the menace of the Forest--where Rosalind and her friend Celia are exiled. The 1930s America setting and her costume suggest the Depression hobos. At a time when the U.S. population was less than half of what it is today, more than a million men rode the rails in the early years of the Depression, riding from one town to another, with no permanent homes. Among them were some women, who often would dress as boys, pretty much like this, as self-protection.

Like other elements of the 1930s setting, though, this works in some ways, and not in others. Rosalind and Celia are exiles, and traveling as women might be dangerous, but they are also wealthy. They soon are able to buy a cottage and land. There is a big difference between a large scale Depression and some exiles playing shepherd and Robin Hood in the forest. The play is located elsewhere than in confronting that social situation.

I should mention that Laube has a distinctive voice, low enough to not only make her male disguise credible but to add colors in the most audible range for stage acting. This production, like many at OSF, features crisp, audible enunciation. Obviously important in Shakespeare--important and unfortunately unusual enough to emphasize.