As you like it, more like as Mrs. Roney likes it! After taking a classic play from 1623, North Penn High School’s theater director Andrea Roney reworked a modern 1960s take on Shakespeare’s As You Like It for this year’s fall play. With opening night on November 21st, the show runs through the weekend until November 24th’s matinee. 

“People are working with Shakespeare to make him accessible, particularly to a student audience,” Roney explained. 

After doing As You Like It in 2015, Roney didn’t want to repeat the 1700s setting they had previously done. Between thoughts of the original 1599 setting, she thought of how she could make Shakespeare more accessible to North Penn High School students. 

“What’s a time period when people were taking over something from someone? Where people were going out into the whole idea of ‘the greenwood’ in British literature,” Roney thought over when coming to her decision to set it in the 1960s. 

With songs from artists including Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, Roney chose music inspired by Elizabethan ballads that had been rediscovered in the 1960s. She wove classic 60s pieces into the show, adding more depth to Shakespeare’s play. 

“The more we talked and the more we did more research, we found more of these connections and then the students started making the connections to our time as well,” Roney smiled when talking about how setting it in the 1960s just made sense. 

“I definitely learned a lot about how to read Shakespeare and how to interpret it. But I also learned a lot about using something like Shakespeare that was from centuries ago and implementing it into something totally different like 1968,” Senior Haruka Weir reflected while discussing the show. 

Both Roney and the students agreed that bringing Shakespeare into a more modern time felt right in many ways. It is interesting and different which produced many opportunities in terms of creative freedom when adapting it. 

“When something’s right, it falls into place. That’s how you know it’s right, when you’re pushing and shoving and trying to make something happen,” Roney mentioned, and it works! 

The play itself follows Rosalind and Orlando, as well as a variety of other characters. This Shakespearean “Rom-Com” as Roney puts it explores jealousy, love, and friendship while simultaneously juxtaposing freedom versus a rigid society.

“I think [the audience] can take away fun. The fact that people in this play find love that has meaning,” Roney explains. 

Not only does the play revel in all things love and friendship, but also it brings light to the relative concept of time.

“It also does a lot of talking and meditating on time,” Roney said. “There is a real sense of time and the appreciation of it in characters and how we grow and how we learn. There’s also a real discussion on what it is to have a relationship with someone.”

The cast itself is a close-knit community that dedicates so many hours a week to creating this performance. Both on-stage and off-stage members run through every single detail to capture the essence of As You Like It. 

“It’s just so different being here in the auditorium, doing all this stuff on stage with the set and costumes. It’s just so much fun,” Senior, and lead ‘Orlando’, Weston Paskewich explained. 

With amazing on-stage chemistry as well as being friends off-stage, the cast’s closeness to each other helps make their shows as good as they are. It is more than fair to say that this is a show that is meant to be seen. 

Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults; they can be purchased at the door or in advance. For those who cannot make any of the live showings, there will be a recorded show for $25 with an unlimited number of viewers.