SOURCE: Brantley, Ben. Review of As You Like It. New York Times (9 August 1999): E1, E3.

In the following review of director Barry Edelstein's 1999 production of As You Like It at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Brantley highlights the centrality of film star Gwyneth Paltrow's excellent performance as Rosalind in this otherwise “burlesque” staging of the drama.

For a moment it looks like Oscar night all over again. There she is in a Grace Kelly ball gown, as pale and luminous as a moonbeam. Yes, it's unmistakably the same swan-necked Gwyneth Paltrow who accepted the Academy Award for best actress for Shakespeare in Love earlier this year. Yet there's something not quite right about the picture.

That dress for example: it fits perfectly, but it seems to be wearing her, as the saying goes, rather than vice versa. Ms. Paltrow curiously appears less at home in such attire than the...