SOURCE: Isherwood, Charles. Review of As You Like It. Variety 375, no. 13 (16-22 August 1999): 36.

In the following review of the 1999 staging of As You Like It at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Isherwood finds director Barry Edelstein's “self-consciously artificial” interpretation destructive to the emotional balance of the play. The critic praises many members of its supporting cast, but suggests that Gwyneth Paltrow's Rosalind failed to live up to the actress's potential.

Shakespearean drag proved exceptionally rewarding for Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, so it's entirely fitting that the bright young star should return to the stage in “doublet and hose,” as Rosalind in the Williamstown Theater Festival's As You Like It. Playing a role that her Oscar-winning turn wittily commented on, Paltrow gives an ardent and appealing performance, full of larking high spirits and smiling charm. Alas, she doesn't succeed in communicating—granted, after only three weeks of rehearsal...