If Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written like this.

The score… would be chart-climbers if this were a time when show tunes still climbed charts.closedquote

David Finkle, theatremania.com

Gleefully sends up the era’s music, and the tunes incorporate various rock, punk, and pop styles.closedquote

Matthew Murray, talkingbroadway.com

Like You Like It deserves great success, too, and will wind up being produced extensively in high schools.closedquote

Peter Filichia, theatremania.com

From The Gallery Players Production:

Who could have imagined that good times could still be had in malls?

THIS SEASON’S BEST NEW MUSICAL ISN’T ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY – IT’S IN BROOKLYN.
Never underestimate the power of a cast clearly having a ball on stage, as this one does under Igor Goldin’s zippy direction; half the fun of the show comes from watching so many talented performers enjoying themselves. …Excellent songs …Surprisingly funny choreography. …The cast is inspired.”

Mark Peikert, backstage.com, October 24, 2008

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SHOW IS DELIGHTFUL.

Maybe most people do not want to admit it, but there is certain joy to be had in watching those high school movies from the 1980’s. Most people would also admit that there is a joy in watching Shakespeare’s plays. So what better way to get the utmost joy and entertainment out of a piece of theater than by combining the two? …The ensemble cast is unified and strong.”

Amy Freeman, offoffonline.com, October 22, 2008

A FEEL-GOOD MUSICAL.
high-spirited romantic comedy

…brings to life the Bard by way of the ’80s John Hughes’ films…
The Gallery Players Theatre in Brooklyn combines the thrills of High School Musical with the beloved Shakespeare comedy of errors in their staging of Like You Like It. … A delight, wildly successful.”

Winnie McCroy, edgenewyork.com, October 22, 2008

REMARKABLE!

Every line, note, lyric and dance number is original… The cast members put on a performance as grand as if they were in a much bigger theater, both in size and scale… You find yourself actually laughing out loud without realizing it. …I lost all sense of being anywhere but in Arden Mall.”

Sarah Portlock, The Brooklyn Paper, October 21, 2008

INNOVATIVE!

One day you can tell all your friends about the time you saw that big Broadway show or that super-star at this little theatre in Brooklyn way-back-when.”

Meredith Lucio, examiner.com, October 20, 2008

THE BROOKLYN PAPER INTERVIEWS DAN

Local boy does good with a new musical…

October 15, 2008

THE JEWISH HERALD VOICE INTERVIEWS SAMMY

Another local boy does good with a new musical…

June 28, 2007

From the NYMF Production:

It takes chutzpah to transform a Shakespeare comedy into a musical.

The plots, late Renaissance equivalents of the campus musical, are there for the plucking, but there’s no escaping the language comparisons that are invited. Sometimes — as with, for instance, the John Guare-Galt MacDermot tuner Two Gentlemen of Verona and Danny Apolinar’s Your Own Thing, the laudable cockiness inherent in such undertakings works into the piece itself.

 

That has happened again with Like You Like It, the spirited entertainment that librettist-lyricist Sammy Buck and composer Daniel S. Acquisto have made of the Bard’s As You Like It. The title alone, recognizing contemporary disregard for correct grammar, signals craftiness and craft. The Buck-Acquisto imaginations extend to moving the Bard’s Arden Forest to Arden Mall, where teens celebrating 1983 trendiness try to connect with each other while playing hooky. Rosalind Duke (Rebecca Bellingham) is chased by Orlando Bateman (Charlie Mechling) until she catches him and simultaneously brings together other hormone-happy couples.

 

Like You Like It is so knowing that, at one point, Rosalind — having strutted through Arden in man’s clothes — cries, “I’m a girl dressed as a boy. Can’t anyone see that?” How Rosalind gets away with her thinly-veiled ruse is a question that Shakespeare audiences have asked for centuries. It’s clever of Buck to have her call attention to the flimsy disguise, and that’s only one of many examples of this musical’s cleverness.”

David Finkle, theatremania.com 10/1/04

They have written these teens with a lot of heart.

It’s clear that librettist-lyricist Sammy Buck and composer Daniel S. Acquisto have a great love for the eighties and for their characters. Even the bitchy girl gets an interesting treatment and transcends cliché.

 

Like You Like It takes familiar subject matter – Shakespeare’s As You Like It – and reworks it as musical theatre. The twist here is that Rosalind, Orlando, and the other familiar Shakespeare characters have been updated to John Hughes-esque teenagers in the 1980s. The score is loaded with period musical references like Men Without Hats and the dialogue references pop cultural touchstones such as Swatch watches and Rubicks Cubes. Our eighties obsession was in overdrive.”

Amy Rosen, gothamist.com 10/3/04