Well, that's a very real and very sharp axe that Rosalind, aka the young Canadian actress Tamara Hickey, is wielding over the head of her clueless Orlando (actor Michael Providence) in order to make her salient points about the subtleties of love. Fortunately it's make-believe, and wonderfully so, in As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's most charming comedies, which opened Thursday night in Edgerton Park.

Joining a staged adaptation of Alexander Dumas' novel, The Three Musketeers, by Charles Morey, which opened last week, Elm Shakespeare Company, in its 13th season, will be running the plays in repertory, on alternating nights beginning Aug. 21, after As You Like Itplays on consecutive nights through the weekend.

This season there are many remarkable features about Elm Shakespeare Company's offerings, not the least of which is that the company, 23 actors of all ages and levels of experience, are all doubling,. That is, they all have roles in both plays. That includes the directors of both plays, Jim Andreassi, Elm Shakespeare's founder, and the director of As You Like It, the TV actor Allyn Burrows (pictured in the sunglasses below).

During the "tech" rehearsal before opening night, the two young stars, the set designer Jamie Burnett (pictured way below), along with founder Jim Andreassi (pictured on the left with actor Nicholas Tucci; Andreassi directs the Musketeers, while also playing the melancholic clown Touchstone in Shakespeare and the evil Cardinal Richelieu in Musketeers, both demanding roles!), took a break. They permitted a reporter the audacity to interrupt rehearsal of such memorable lines (Rosalind's) as "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love," to chat about the plays, the season, and the future.

NHI: I understand you decided to set As You Like It in 1967. Why?
JA: Well, lots of reasons. The idea of people fleeing the growing military atmosphere of a court to seek a kind of refuge in the idealistic country speaks to us today. Of course, we were thinking Vietnam as well. And the music is great too: Donavan, Credence Clearwater Revival, Joni Mitchell, Hendrix, among others.
AB: Yes, the 40th anniversary of the summer of love, 1967 and 2007. The Forest of Arden in the play is a kind of Woodstock, if you use your imagination. And then the other numbers work too. Shakespeare wrote the play in 1597.
NHI: So, of all the great music from that era, does one theme song or sound emerge as dominant in your adaptation?

AB: Well, maybe Donovan. It accompanies Orlando, the dreamy lover.
NHI: Has anyone done a 1967 version of As You Like It?
JA: I don't think so, but we find it really works, and it really fits in with The Three Musketeers.
NHI: How so?
JA: Well, this is the second season we've been doing two plays in repertory. Last season it was Much Ado and a Robin Hood, and it really worked. Audiences loved it, and I want to build an audience that might not think it would like a Shakespeare at first, but then be drawn in by something related. And Robin's forest, you know, was a kind of Forest of Arden. As to the Dumas adaptation by Charles Morey, to my knowledge it's the only staged version. I was in the premier, as an actor, at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City in 1989. It's less sophisticated than Shakespeare. But technically it's very demanding. You'll see we have a revolving stage, and there are 40 or 50 separate scenes and sword fighting and the stage turns. Whew!
NHI: Speaking of demanding, tell me about the doubling of roles.
TH: Well, it is. You have to be able to hold a large amount of material in your mind and in your body.
AB: But it's in the great Shakespearean tradition.
NHI: Meaning?
AB: Shakespeare wrote, of course, and acted, but he probably directed as well.
NHI: You're Athos, one of the musketeers, and, let me see, Jacques, one of the satirical fellows in the Shakespeare. Right? You've have done before?
AB: Oh yes.
NT: These guys are amazing, Jim and Allyn. They are directing but they are taking these big roles too. Their energy and versatility in a way guide us. I mean the way Allyn does Athos, he's like this big wizened Clint Eastwood of a musketeer.
NHI: Would you tell me about some of your backgrounds, Rosalind and Orlando, and how'd you get these roles?

MP: I graduated from the Actors Studio Drama School, and have been doing things in New York. Recently I was Edmond in Long Day's Journey in Buffalo. I came to the open audition here, and, look, my lucky day.
TH: My training's a little different. I've been doing television recently, in Canada, on a long-running legal drama, The Associates. But by training I know and love the theater. I got an MFA from the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, and we go way back to the Moscow Art Theater, out of which ART derives. Chekhov and all. I can see Rosalind as Chekhovian. I mean she's really complex, very advancedwoman for her time.
NHI: You're married to your director, right?
TH: Correct.
AB: We met when I was playing Shakespeare, Benedict in Much Ado
TH: And I was a clown . . .
NHI: I see. I won't ask any more on this subject. . . Tell me about that incredible stage.

JA: Well, the set and lighting designer is Jamie Burnett there. Lots of the actors have been in many Elm Shakespeare Company productions, but I believe that only Jamie and I have been in all of them. We need the revolving stage because the premise, the metaphor at the heart of the play is that Dumas has this little carousel on his desk, he turns it, and through the magic of ... you get the idea. In some scenes we have horses going around on the carousel. In others .. I don't know what! We throw that grea netting over Richelieu's castle or over the convent of the Carmelites and, presto, thanks to Jamie, we have the Forest of Arden.
NHI: What's the forest made of?
JB: Let me see. U.S. Army and Navy camouflage. Some camouflage from the Swedish army as well.
NHI: You didn't actually build the revolving part of the stage?
JB: Are you kidding? It's borrowed, for a fee, from Long Wharf. I used to work there as a master electrician many years ago -- and after that did shows at ECA.
NHI: And the castle/convent walls and these pillars, where did you get ideas for them?
JB: I keep hundreds of pictures here from travels. Not long ago, we were in Russia. We visited Catherine's palaces. Lapis lazuli columns, gilding at the top. See here. It's the same period as the musketeers, so voila!
NHI: So, is it working, the two shows in repertory?
JA: It's exhausting, of course, but it is working. Like gangbusters.

Both shows (pictured: Musketeers) will run only through Sept. 2, so some advice: Get to the Forest of Arden up on Whitney Avenue as soon as you can. Performances are free, though donations are encouraged, and you may picnic before the 8 p.m. curtain. Click here for more info and directions. No swords or axes permitted among the audience.