As You Like It Midsommer Flight’s As You Like It is outdoor Shakespeare done the old-fashioned way, complete with Elizabethan costumes and musical interludes. The banished duke’s daughter, Rosalind (Emily Demko), and her sisterly cousin, Celia (Charlee Cotton), flee the frigid atmosphere of court for a life of revelry and disguise amid the forests of Arden. They bring the motley fool Touchstone (Adam Habben) along for the ride; despite overemphasizing his punch lines from time to time, Habben makes a fine clown. As the inevitable coupling begins (this is a comedy, after all), the tenderness of Touchstone’s bond with the dull, affectionate country maiden Audrey (played with sensitivity and sweetness by Margaret Kellas) is one of this show’s unexpected delights. This weekend the production plays Touhy Park (7348 N. Paulina); it finishes out its run through August 21 at Schreiber Park (1552 W. Schreiber) and Gross Park (2708 W. Lawrence). —Max Maller
Kin Folk Mary is busy building her online brand as Mary-Beth, a household advice guru. Her transgender brother has surgically rebranded himself as Eleanor. But third sibling Lucy has them both beat. Sparked by her discovery of a virtual fantasy community where people adopt Tolkien-esque avatars, she now sees herself as Kreeka. A dragon. And she’s not role-playing. William Glick’s script has a ways to go if it’s going to fully inhabit its own identity as a seriocomic look at the new culture of self-creation. The way things stand, for instance, the only apparent reason for the sisters’ shared dysphoria is that the concept demands it. But the potential is there—along with a certain charm, as when Annie Prichard’s Lucy perches like a gargoyle and roars back at a question from a friend. One significant problem: director Evan Linder weakens this New Colony world premiere by parking it in John Wilson’s vague and figurative set. The humor, magic, pain, and surprise of Kin Folk all require absolute realism to bring them into sharp relief. —Tony Adler
Squeeze My Cans The enemy of Scientology is truth, and in Squeeze My Cans, Cathy Schenkelberg makes sure the message of her brutally honest story comes through loud and clear: Stay away from this intergalactic Ponzi scheme. Told with masterful fluidity and hilarious jabs, this one-woman show directed by Shirley Anderson does more than debunk L. Ron Hubbard’s creation; Schenkelberg puts you in her skin and lets you experience for yourself how Scientology devours money (in Schenkelberg’s case, $900,000) and lives. Brandon Baruch is behind the subtle lighting design, Victoria Deiorio the sound and projections. —A.J. Sørensen
