Gender-bending, naughty backwoods ribaldry and no-holds-barred wrestling — there’s enough crazy stuff in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” to confuse it with an episode of “Jerry Springer.”

Just like a good “Springer” show (granted, if that were possible), there are scads of surprises to be found in the Southwest Shakespeare Company staging of the Bard’s pastoral romp of country copulatives. But the biggest surprise is where you’ll find the best performances.

They’re not in the leads, Rosalind and Orlando, the young woman and man banished to the forest after Rosie’s father, Duke Senior, is kicked off the throne by his brother, Frederick, and sent to establish a transcendentalist enclave (of sorts) amongst the trees. No, just as ol’ Shakey loves to chock his comic fools full of ironic wisdom, director Jared Sakren has allowed Valley actor Richard Trujillo — as Touchstone, the jesterly companion to Rosalind and dear cousin Celia in their forest banishment — to absolutely walk away with the show.

If audiences are confused by Shakespeare’s language at times — and it’s easy to get lost in this comic tale of left-of-center love and reverse-“Beverly Hillbillies” fish-out-of-water adjustment— they need only look to Trujillo for ultra-animated gestures and pitch-perfect emphasis of his lines, which proves to be like American subtitles for Elizabethan English. Much appreciated. Not only does he also earn the show’s biggest laughs, he also has the most comfortable time balancing the broadness needed to play the outdoor Mesa Amphitheatre and the subtlety that a good Shakespeare production deserves.

Sakren has stashed other jewels deeper in the background cast — including Michael Sherwin as Orlando’s withered but loyal Old Adam (his brief performance in Act II reminded me of Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” — in a good way) and Jennifer Bemis as Phebe, a lovesick girl who has a taste for bad boys.
The end effect of stacking the deck so heavily toward the ancillary, though, is that we’re less interested in watching Rosalind (played by Quetta Carpenter) dress as a boy to tease and romance Orlando, the central story line. Carpenter’s fine here, though her Rosalind comes off as jaded when telling us, “Love’s merely a madness,” and when she says she’s “fathoms-deep in love,” we can’t quite see how. Carpenter doesn’t woo us as easily as Orlando, but nevertheless she has an adeptness with the text that’s a joy to observe.
Meanwhile, compared to the vibrant rest of the cast, Kyle Sorrell’s Orlando has all the charisma of a crash test dummy, hurtled from scene to scene. That’s an unwelcome surprise in an otherwise solid, sturdy show.

In costuming (because the set is a threadbare bit of trees on a raked blue stage), this “As You Like It” goes for Baroque, having been updated to the 1750s to take advantage of fashions that easier excuse the idea of Rosalind passing as a boy. The update is interesting (and the costumes by Lois Myers are wonderful), though it’s hardly revolutionary, and doesn’t flavor the production too much for the better or worse.

This “As You Like It,” like most everything Southwest Shakespeare does, is certainly worth seeing — though audiences would be well-advised of two things: First, don’t be surprised when the fool rules the show. And second, most importantly, don’t approach the play as if it’s a Shakespearian work of great import; it’s not. It’s a simple pastoral comedy about the absurdities of love.

Which, when you think about it, is what “Jerry Springer” is usually about, too.