PlayMaker's presentation of "As You Like It" experiments with setting and music

Alive and chirping, crickets cling to a forested stage in Paul Green Theatre, awaiting the production of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

One of Shakespeare’s comedies, “As You Like It” is about love. Couples are paired, warring brothers make amends and melancholy shepherds find smiles.

But PlayMakers Repertory Company is aiming to investigate themes aside from lovesick hearts.

“Obviously the play is about love, but it is also about identity,” said Jeffrey Cornell, who plays both Duke Frederick and Duke Senior.

Mistaken and disguised identities result in confusion that directs the play’s action. Rosalind, the play’s heroine, dresses as a man to advise her potential love, Orlando, in how to woo.

“The cross dressing, yeah, it’s a device for comedy,” Cornell said. “But it seems she’s also exploring what it means to be a woman.”

As Rosalind changes from a woman to a man, and then back to woman, supporting characters change their outlooks on life, too.

“I love the play because of how much is packed into it,” said director and PlayMakers’ producing artistic director Joseph Haj. “It combines the silly with the profound, sometimes in the same scene.”

And as Shakespeare’s characters go through their dramatic changes, so will PlayMaker’s set. The play begins in a royal court and ends nestled in a forest.

“The beginning of the play starts in winter, where life is a cold, dead possibility,” Haj said. “What these characters are missing, the forest gives to them.”

Celtic music

Original musical compositions written by Mike Yionoulis help to guide the production’s twisting plot.

“There is something very refined about Irish music and honest about it,” Yionoulis said. “You can hear the struggle in it, something beautiful and melodic.”

At pivotal points in the play, Yionoulis’ craftsmanship is meant to add poignancy.

As a character is beaten, a piercing pennywhistle sounds, Yionoulis said.

Haj encouraged Yionoulis — a classmate from his days at the UNC master of fine arts program — to follow his own interpretations in designing the aural fabric of the show.

“Joe said to feel free to change or to do entirely new songs,” Yionoulis said.

Yionoulis did a little of both — he wrote the music for four pieces in the production, crafting new lyrics for two while tinkering with the lyrics of two others found in the script.

It was intimidating to work and formulate lyrics composed in iambic pentameter, Yionoulis said. He adapted the text to best sit with a modern audience and conform to the structure of an Irish ballad.

“I tried to keep the rhythm so it seemed to fit in the same piece,” Yionoulis said.

Graduate student Katie Paxton, who plays Lord Amiens, is excited about the tunes that Yionoulis has created.

“It starts out beautiful and slow, and slowly builds into a big Celtic driving force.”

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