If Arden, the sprawling, wild forest in William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” were in the United States instead of the Bard’s imagination, it would certainly be a national park.
Like Yosemite.
That is why this light comedy is an ideal fit for the annual UC Merced theater project that weaves modern issues of environmental stewardship into the 16th-century playwright’s words.
“As Yosemite Likes It” is the eighth edition of Shakespeare in Yosemite. Like its predecessors, it features performers and backstage talent from the Merced and park communities and is packed with toe-tapping music, including three original songs.
But it is Shakespeare’s storyline, in which characters come to the forest of Arden from a corrupt city and experience the transformative power of nature, that makes it ideal for theater and literature Professor Katie Brokaw’s themes of appreciating and protecting the ecosystem.
