As You Like It

2016 Wilde Award Winner – Best Actress in a Shakespeare Play

“While the dry and melancholy killjoy has always been a fan-favorite, Jacques is often given little to do besides be grumpy. But Haley’s depiction seemed to take things a little less seriously, perhaps because she was often breaking the fourth wall, and she was just as likely to share a nugget of genuine wisdom as to make a snide remark. Haley’s performance along with Kaulzaric’s creative reinterpretation of the character managed to truly elevate Jacques from a (lovable) stereotype to one of the most nuanced and compelling figures in the play.”

– The Odyssey Online

“When you have a star—like the Michigan Shakespeare Festival has in Janet Haley—it’s not surprising that you would not only pick your season around her talents, but that you might rewrite the play to put the spotlight on her abilities. That’s what Director Robert Kauzlaric has done with Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy, As You Like It. He’s not only rearranged the play, but he’s given lines to different people, moved around some of the more famous speeches, created encounters where the original play had none and expanded the theatricality of the show to put an emphasis on the redemptive power of storytelling. How is this done? Primarily by making Jacques, the part played by Haley, into a major mover and shaker in the play. She’s not only an attendant of the exiled duke, she’s also narrator, poet and observer. She co-opts one of Rosalind’s famed monologues and owns the show’s launch. Haley is more than up for the part. Haley is literature’s first Emo character, moping about deep in melancholy, caught up in the hardships of life in the forest. But she is also observer of the city and the court, telling the audience of all that has come before the show while the characters perform it in mime behind her. She starts with a prosaic quip, one the director will use again to launch one of the play’s more unexpected conversions. From there she shows herself to be the play’s wise fool, usurping Touchstone in the role who becomes more of an actor than an observer, in one of Shakespeare’s twists from his usual choice. Haley’s Jacques spies and teaches, spouting wisdom with the light-footedness of a jester and the demeanor of one in mourning. She makes each line count, delivering the Bard’s lines with clarity and purpose.“

– Encore Michigan