[In the following review of an abridged, six-person cast production of As You Like It directed by Erica Schmidt in 2000, Bruckner views this comedic and acrobatic staging of the play as “a good-humored tribute to Shakespeare.”]

As You Like It is taken by the Liars Club as an invitation from Shakespeare rather than as a mere title, and the company interprets the invitation pretty broadly. That's not a bad idea: this is a hardy play, and turning it into a circus not only produces unexpected laughter but also reminds us of how infinitely subversive the playwright's imagination was.

This young company, which last year transformed Romeo and Juliet into a street fight spun out of control in the back lot of a Lower East Side car repair shop, has invaded West 42nd Street for a few weeks, and it begins its As You Like It with a whoop. In an empty ground-floor commercial space a few steps west of Sixth Avenue, it has stacked seats on two sides of a performance space outlined by makeshift footlights. Once viewers are seated, the six actors, like a pack of tourists searching for excitement, burst into the place through the street door, one shouting to the others, “An audience!” It never gets quieter than that until the last line rings out little more than an hour and a half later.

The 6 are listed in 13 roles. Actually they take many more, since most of the minor characters are folded here into a few. Drew Cortese has it fairly easy being both dukes, the good and the bad, plus other people, since the dukes have only one common scene; playing the determinedly innocent rustic Sylvius is a tougher assignment, and he handles it very well.

Lorenzo Pisoni as the brothers, Orlando and Oliver, is in a tighter spot several times, and his efforts to get out of it are vastly entertaining, including a heated argument between the two that ends with Mr. Pisoni in hand-to-hand combat with himself until the noble brother decks the scheming one in a pair of spectacular backward somersaults.

Teasing the audience about identity switches is all part of the fun. In his boasting scene Charles the wrestler is a leather mask handed off from actor to actor and speaking in various voices, but when he is in the ring with Orlando, the wrestler is actually a woman, and the struggle becomes a fine spoof of ballet. We always know when Lethia Nall is Celia, daughter of the bad duke, because Celia carries a complete tiny tea set with her everywhere that she unpacks daintily from a tiny wicker picnic case.

None of the actors depend entirely on a mere change of costume to signal a new role; they haven't time for that anyway. But when Rosalind becomes the boy Ganymede, Angela Goethals manages to stuff Rosalind in her silk dress inside the short pants of a schoolboy so quickly that she certainly earns the appreciative gasp of the audience. Ms. Goethals brings much more to this character, however. The exchanges between Rosalind disguised as a boy and Orlando practicing lovemaking have a poignancy that cuts right through all the high jinks of this troupe.

At times identities simply float among the actors, who help one another jump from role to role by snatching off caps, hats or wigs from their nearest neighbors. One wig is essential: the white head of Orlando's old servant, Adam. Molly Ward, who is admirably restrained as both country women, Audrey and Phebe, is triumphant as Adam. It isn't the white hair alone that makes her appear the most bedraggled, beaten down, whimpering old Adam I can recall.

Inevitably this approach to the play now and then goes over the top. Johnny Giacolone's pratfalls, when he is a Touchstone with a few of the play's other yokels folded into him, are fine old-fashioned clowning but noticeably out of place here. And you know for certain that when Ganymede says, “This is the forest of Arden,” some actor will spring in from the sidelines to sprinkle autumn leaves on the floor.

In a version so truncated some things are lost, most notably the songs. But I am not sure I would trade amateur singing of ersatz Elizabethan melodies for the exquisite mockery of the acting tradition realized when Jaques (again Mr. Giacolone) pleads with a whistling stuffed bird for more singing to feed his melancholy. Since in the sheer speed and robustness of this performance a good deal of the languorous personality of Jaques is blown away, I would resent the loss of this intensely funny reminder of who he is in the original play.

As she did with Romeo, Erica Schmidt, the director, stamps such a distinctive shape on this presentation and gives it such sharp rhythm that it feels much more like a good-humored tribute to Shakespeare than an invasion of him, especially since the actors speak with gratifying clarity and precision those lines that haven't been pruned.