Tag Archives: Forest of Arden

ALL THE WORLD’S A MALL: The 80s Are Back!

IF SHAKESPEARE WERE ALIVE TODAY, HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN LIKE THIS.” The score … would be chart-climbers if this were a time when show tunes still climbed charts. -David Finkle, theatremania.com

GLEEFULLY SENDS UP THE ERA’S MUSIC, AND THE TUNES INCORPORATE VARIOUS ROCK, PUNK, AND POP STYLES.” -Matthew Murray, talkingbroadway.com

LIKE YOU LIKE IT DESERVES GREAT SUCCESS, TOO, AND WILL WIND UP BEING PRODUCED EXTENSIVELY IN HIGH SCHOOLS.” -Peter Filichia, theatremania.com

What happens when you mix the classic William Shakespeare comedy of As You Like It with the wildly popular genre of music and culture of John Hughes’ 1980s films?

The result is a new and exciting musical adventure centered on the coolest locale of the time… the Robin Sparkles-esque 1980s mall scene.

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Utopia or Vacation

Image result for forest of arden shakespeare As a pastoral comedy, As You Like It features the Forest of Arden as a setting that fosters utopian values. While characters such as Duke Senior celebrate the culture of Arden, the behaviors of his men and the antics of Jacques and Touchstone call the utopian status of the forest into question. In his essay “As You Like It: The Thin Line Between Legitimate Utopia and Compensatory Vacation”, Farrar examines how Shakespeare dramatizes the problems facing the utopian imagination through the conflicts of each character’s attitude. Continue reading