Reese Cowley & Jeff Yung in Pastoral | Photo by Mike McPhaden
The narrative thrust of Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)’s sequel to Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the aptly named Pastoral, presented by Shakespeare in the Ruff, feels very pantomime. It has campy self-awareness and the story occupies that tell-tale limbo, where classical elements exist alongside references to Doug Ford, Instagram and nepo babies. The messaging about progress and environmental activism are, on one level, a bit hokey, designed to be accessible to youngsters, but there’s intelligence and lyricism in the craft, allowing real insight to emerge from the playfulness.
The whimsical aesthetic of director Warona Setshwaelo’s staging contributes greatly to the panto gestalt, though it too achieves a level of charm and scrappy artfulness that transcend the goofy facade. The giddy and boisterous performances have a through-line of sincerity and, sometimes, surprising gravitas.
Two years after the handful of marriages that resolve the comic shenanigans of As You Like It, the forest of Arden is once again the scene of both romance, antics and conflict. Orlando (Jeff Yung 容海峯) and Rosalind (Reese Cowley) celebrate their anniversary by role-playing their courtship. He writes poetry and sticks it on trees while she dresses back up in her page-boy Ganymede disguise. Yung and Cowley are suitably adorable and, when the oh-so-cute lovers eventually butt heads, a persuasive portrait of clashing ideals.
This corny tradition is interrupted by fearsome explosions which panic the animals and alert the couple to the deforestation being carried out by another husband-wife team—Lumberjack Jack (Norman Yeung, cartoonishly dashing in a high-vis vest) and shepherdess Becky (jonnie lombard, whose earthy-chic get up is just one of several rather stunning outfits). Shout out to Julia Kim for some quaint, lovely attire.
Norman Yeung, jonnie lombard & Asher Rose in Pastoral | Photos by Mike McPhaden
lombard and Yeung also play another husband-wife duo, returning players from the original, Celia and Oliver. Turns out the dynamite and axe-wielding contractors have been hired by them to pave the way for their capitalistic ambitions. Their venture conflicts with Orlando and Rosalind’s responsibility to maintain the flora and fauna of the enchanted forest. Hilarity ensues, but also prickly discourse and even some heartbreak.
lombard is such a buoyant and dazzling presence. This is only the second role I’ve seen them in (having first encountered them as Ofelia in a production of Hamlet back in the spring) and I find their poise deeply compelling, expressing an array of feminine personae that deconstruct gender yet are, simultaneously, utterly guileless. This ties rather directly into an aspect of Rosalind’s mythic legacy that Ho has worked into this sequel, the notion that she too is known for challenging gender norms.
For me, the emotional core of this pastoral ode, oddly enough, is the plight of the clown. Played with astonishing pathos by Asher Rose (who also embodies a firm challenge to a binary thinking), Jacques is tired of being the clown; their full humanity involves a reckoning with loss and anger. Grappling with the sad fate of their dear/deer friend, Zoe (a heartbreaking scenario enhanced by punny, comic punctuation), Rose’s Jacques grounds this new story with a poignant earnestness.
Full of satisfying references to the original Shakespeare (Ho’s own verse is convincingly Bard-y!) and blending it seamlessly into a contemporary context, this allows ample space for the silly and sublime. The iconic “All the world’s a stage…” monologue is given a cosmic, prehistoric and futuristic reworking—an ode to the earth and our ephemeral existence upon it—that is melancholically aware of human impermanence, but isn’t a downer. Pastoral is ultimately upbeat, expressing the importance of choice and making the best of our limited time.
Pastoral
August 18 to 30, 2026
Withrow Park
(725 Logan Ave.)
80 minutes
Reese Cowley, Asher Rose & Jeff Yung in Pastoral | Photo by Mike McPhaden