From a review by theatre critic Lawrence Bommer
published in the Chicago Tribune, June 1995:
Robin Hood is a successful attempt to
wed the Bard’s strength and style to a 12th-Century legend as English as the
language. A labor of love and intense research, Lynch-Giddings’ worthy fake
holds its own with such lesser Shakespeare as Comedy of Errors and King
John. Shakespeare, who according to legend was arrested for poaching on a
nobleman’s preserve, would have sympathized with the Merry Men: Loyally awaiting rightful King Richard’s
return from the Crusades, Robin’s freedom fighters defended the poor against
the predations of Prince John and the sheriff of Nottingham.
Pursuing persuasive
parallels, Lynch-Giddings forges links between plucky Robin and rowdy Prince
Hal, between rotund Friar Tuck and rascally Falstaff … , between intrepid
Rosalind and a resourceful Maid Marian, and, for settings, between virtuous
Sherwood Forest and the equally ennobling Forest of Arden….
While preserving a
rollicking plot familiar in Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner vehicles,
Lynch-Giddings gives his folk hero a touch of Hamlet’s melancholy. A
philosophical Robin regrets “the workings of the world, this wrack of greed and
pride.”
Free of anachronisms, the
verse faithfully imitates Shakespeare’s iambic cadences, his passion for
soaring similes, even the bawdy wordplay and tedious raillery. Though the deliberate rhyming at times
resembles a clone of Richard Wilbur’s Moliere translations, overall Robin
Hood heartily recalls its great inspiration.
Equity Library Theatre’s
painstaking staging … wisely lets its 18-member cast polish its skills on an
eloquent script. Stephen Spencer’s valiant Robin, Roxanne Fay’s warrior
feminist Marian, Richard Marlatt’s elaborately evil sheriff, and Andrew Leman’s
boisterous Little John reinvent the joy of acting.