Actor Michael Underhill – Unraveling the Gender Politics of 'As You Like It'

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company returns to the Boston Common July 23 - August 10 for a rousing romp through the Forest of Arden with "As You Like It." The outdoor production – directed by CSC Founding Artistic Director Steven Maler – will be free of charge, as always (though donors will have access to reserved seating), and will boast a roster of leading lights from the Boston stage, including Nora Eschenheimer, Johnny Kuntz, Maurice Emmanuel Parent, Remo Airaldi, Jared Troilo, Brooks Reeves, and more – so many more. (For more information, follow this link.)

The production will also welcome Boston-area native Michael Underhill back to the city's theater scene in the role of Orlando, a young nobleman who has been banished by his older brother. Far from having been banished from the Hub of the Universe, Underhill has been away to complete his MFA with The Old Globe / University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program, and, degree in hand, pursue his craft in New York City.

For years, however, he was a rising star in Boston, deeply involved with both Imaginary Beasts and Happy Medium Theatre Company – two small companies that helped power Boston's vibrant theater scene in the aughts and teens – and acting in projects from the city's scrappiest fringe theater companies (Heart & Dagger, Whistler in the Dark) to its most formidable midsize and large companies (Huntington Theatre Company, Central Square Theater, Stoneham Theater) and everything in between (including Apollinaire Theatre and the Gold Dust Orphans).

Indeed, Underhill is an actor so dedicated to his craft that at one point he hosted Happy Medium's production of Christopher Shinn's play "Dying City" in his own living room – an experience in spirited small theater that lingers in this correspondent's memory even today.

Underhill played a gay actor in that production, and his character in "As You Like It" might be described as accidentally queer, falling in love as he does with a young man named Ganymede... who, in reality, is a young noblewoman named Rosalind. Like Orlando, Rosalind has been exiled from the duchy after her power-mad uncle Frederick deposed her father, the rightful duke. What's a young man to do when he finds himself inexplicably attracted to another young man... one named after the mythical male lover of Jove, the king of the gods, no less?

More to the point: Being stuffed as it is with authoritarian heads of state, political persecution, and a facsimile of same-sex romance, could any Elizabethan play feel timelier to the current moment?

When he spoke with EDGE, Underhill had just been at a "Star Trek" convention where his partner, Emma, had presented a solo show called "Space Babe." Questions of gender, societal expectations, and the subversion of those expectations were on his mind. Dovetailing with that, he said that he sees his character as not being so different from many young reactionaries of today.

"This is a man who has been isolated on his father's estate," Underhill said of Orlando. "His brother has all the power, and he's being deprived of education and exposure to the world. He's just so hungry for knowledge and culture, and to be integrated with the powers that be."

It's a comparison that's underscored by Maler's decision to stage the play in something resembling contemporary times, "when there are a lot of young men who are feeling that they don't have a connection with the world," Underhill explained. "I think there's a lot of folks who are feeling [they are] in a place of uncertainty and have an expectation of what should have been given them. I think Orlando's initial response to gain it back is violence.... He goes to the town square for a wrestling contest; this is the only way in which he knows how to earn respect."

But if there's anything characters in a Shakespeare play can expect after being exiled to a forest (or a remote island, or a foreign land), it's profound transformation. Once he finds himself in the Forest of Arden, Underhill notes, Orlando "[goes] from violence and masculinity to poetry and softness and the wilderness," thanks to his falling in love with Ganymede.

"I think that's such an interesting juxtaposition of what he knows, and he yearns for in this world, and the opportunities that are presented to him," Underhill mused. "He doesn't have access to love, poetry, softness, or culture until he is exiled from society."

Themes of banishment, sexual intrigue, gender representation, and political usurpation were staples of playwrights in Shakespeare's time, as well as after. A recent Boston production of the 1732 Pierre de Marivaux play "The Triumph of Love" echoed those same themes. Obviously, they still speak to us today.

"One of the reasons we continue to produce these plays is these threads of humanity persist throughout our existence," Underhill noted. "How do we deal with our fellow man? How do we deal with power structures? Those who are in power are always very hesitant to give it up, and those who are not in possession of it are yearning for more possession of it.

"That can be a macrocosm to organizational structures, and it can be microcosm of personal, intimate dynamics between family, friends, and lovers," the actor posited. "We see within Orlando this slight difference of how he meets Rosalind very briefly, and he's very quickly in what he believes to be love, or at least infatuation; then he meets Ganymede, who he believes to be a man pretending to be a woman" – his point being that "Ganymede" is actually a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. If that sounds confusing, it's also part of Shakespeare's labyrinthine plotting as the Bard weaves strand after strand into a dense narrative construct.

"There are so many sheets we're trying to look behind of identity, of presentation of gender, and how Orlando feels comfortable taking orders from this young man in the forest because he presents himself as being in a position of authority," Underhill observed. At the same time, Orlando's complicated feelings for Ganymede "unravel" his presuppositions about himself. "In Shakespeare's time," Underhill noted, "there would have to be some subterfuge around anything suggesting a queer love story."

Now, of course, it's not necessary to be so circumspect. But that, Underhill pointed out, doesn't mean there's a sense of complete freedom for the queer community. "Even though we are 400 years past those senses of subterfuge, the hiding of these themes is still relevant and necessary," he said. "These issues are under attack today. I was on one of the panels this past weekend at the 'Star Trek' convention, and we were talking about how there is a safety in performance of identity, like drag performance.

"Reality is a costume," Underhill added. "I do think that those themes are relevant, particularly right now."

If he's looking forward to how the audience relates to Orlando's journey – and his romantic conundrums – Underhill is also keen to experience the CSC design team's vision for producing a play that has an outdoor setting in the environs of the Boston Common. "I'm so excited to see what the sort of design team has in store for the transition from the court to the forest," Underhill exclaimed. "I mean, we literally are in the park, we are in the center of the city."

Riw Rakkulcho is handling the production's scenic design, with Eric Southern doing the lighting and Aubrey Dube in charge of the sound. "As You Like It" famously includes several thematically relevant songs, which will fall in the wheelhouse of composer and music director David Reiffel; meantime, it will be up to costumer Miranda Giurleo and properties designer Lauren Corcuera to bridge the play's Elizabethan origins with our 21st-century present day.

And what could be more contemporary than the role of the intimacy choreographer? Lauren A. Cook takes on that role, while Peter DiMuro oversees movement choreography and Ryan Winkles choreographs the fights.

"I'm excited to come back," Underhill said of his return to Boston after several years away. "I was just in Worcester at the Hanover Rep for 'Much Ado About Nothing,' which was a pseudo-homecoming to Massachusetts, since I've never really been to Worcester before. This will truly be my homecoming after grad school and coming back from California and New York. I'm so excited to land back in Boston and be back amongst the community that made me who I am, and to be able to share this play this summer."

Community, in Underhill's case, means more than his old pals in the city's theater scene. It means family, as well.

"My mom's already got her neighborhood newsletter out to get the evening together to come out and see the show," the actor smiled. "It's a very exciting show to be able to pitch and share with everybody that I'll be getting to see again."

"As You Like It" plays on the Boston Common July 23 – August 10. For more information, follow this link.