The Beatles-fuelled hit As You Like It returns to open Bard on the Beach festival, with previews starting June 8
Psychedelic sets, flower-powered costumes, and a live band help make the BC-set show the fest’s biggest hit
The 2023 rendition of As You Like It. Photo by Tim Matheson
Bard on the Beach presents As You Like It at the BMO Mainstage in Vanier Park from June 8 to September 30
BARD ON THE BEACH’S Beatles-music-fuelled As You Like It broke Bard box office records in 2018—such a hit that the company extended their season into the fall. It later went on to tour to Edmonton, Chicago, and Milwaukee to rave reviews: “The Beatles meet the Bard and it’s a terrific party,” raved the Chicago Tribune headline in 2021.
For those Vancouverites who missed it—and for the many who loved it so much they’d jump at the chance to see it again—director Daryl Cloran’s box-office smash returns to open Bard on the Beach’s season this year.
Back are Pam Johnson’s psychedelic sets, Carmen Alatorre’s flower-powered costumes, and almost 25 of your favourite Beatles tunes—most centrally, “All You Need Is Love”—backed up by an on-stage band of guitar, drums, bass, and keyboards.
The whole comedy fits fluidly into hippie-heyday Kitsilano, when the ‘hood was home to West Coast counterculture. Instead of the Forest of Arden, the lovers escape to the vast Okanagan—a lot like the back-to-the-landers did in the 1960s. The show even has a nod to Vancouver’s All-Star Wrestling of the era.
A few of the leads have changed: Chelsea Rose is Rosalind, Alexandra Lainfiesta is Phoebe/Eleanor Rigby, Oscar Derkx is Orlando, and Andrew McNee is Touchstone, to name a few.
Apparently there are some other new touches as well. See it if you can—it's about as much fun as you can have at a night out to Shakespeare. The beach, the Beatles, the Bard: in the hands of this production, they all make perfect sense together.
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