SOURCE: Lemon, Brendan. “Poised Paltrow Is Jazzed Up.” Financial Times (16 August 1999): 12.

In the following review, Lemon provides a favorable evaluation of Barry Edelstein's Williamstown Theater Festival rendering of As You Like It, singling out its jazzy, improvisational tone and Gwyneth Paltrow's accomplished Rosalind.

As You Like It has been through so many permutations of race, class, and gender of late that it comes as something of a relief in Barry Edelstein's straightforward, slightly eccentric production to realise that directorial conceits will be kept to a minimum. The staging, which just completed a brief, hoopla-attended run in Massachusetts, offers only one unusual notion: jazz.

The Charlie Parker-meets-swingtime music, composed by Mark Bennett, is heard so often that it functions less as a score than as a soundtrack. At first, the music serves awkwardly to punch up emotions that would have better been left to the actors, and the sax-heavy...