As You Like It isn’t a play for those who favour hard edged realist drama. Arcadian forest dwellers, inexplicable changes of personality and circumstance and much singing and dancing make political exile and banishment look like a fate ferverently to be wished for. George Bernard Shaw, you won’t be surprised to learn, hated it. Was he wrong to hate it? Of course he was. The exile of Duke Senior is already in place when we join the action and the sour rule of Duke Frederick is poisoning the atmosphere. Although Duke Senior’s daughter Rosalind has been allowed to stay at court this state of affairs is not allowed to last long. Sarah Evans as Rosalind did a good job of looking completely baffled at this turn of events and generally managed her many changes of mood well. First a happy chum and temporarily orphaned niece, then a starstruck admirer of Alexander Buckley’s Orlando, next a crossdressing yokel trying hard to be manly enough to deflect suspicion, yet feminine enough to entice admiration. Her partner in self imposed exile Harriet Bradley’s Celia (a sort of Robin to Rosalind’s Batman) took a while to get going as her character the first night I saw the play but had settled into the spirit of things by the end and mastered the quite difficult art of convincing us she had fallen for Martin Scully’s Oliver de Boys despite his somewhat precipitous transformation from base villain to penitent proto shepherd : “Twas I;but ‘tis not I”. I think I preferred him as a shameless land grabbing bounder. He radiated gruff unreasonableness. His wronged but ultimately triumphant brother Orlando was caught perfectly by Alexander Buckley although I did see him much more as a lover than a fighter. His expressions of confusion and confused desire when dealing with the cross dressing Rosalind were a comic delight. Never has so much deception been sown by one large hat.

The play is so stuffed with good characters that you can imagine Shakespeare’s agent telling him to save some for another play. Who could fail to warm to Martin Shaw’s Touchstone? I have fond memories of his Barkis and just as with that character Touchstone is also willin’. His many memorable lines were delivered with aplomb and although this is in theory the “clown” role in the play I think that doesn’t give enough credit to either the bard or the actor. I could have watched him for hours, especially his speech setting out the various degrees of lie. As could the melancholic Jacques: “Is this not a rare fellow my lord? He’s as good at any thing, and yet a fool!”. Ian Recordon gave a fine performance as the intriguing depressive of the greensward. His rendition of the “seven ages” speech was as good as I have ever heard it done and gave it the gravity that it deserves - a proper purpose not a party piece. The character’s exit at the end was done well , but having warmed to him we did worry that he was going to spend his remaining days with Chris Holmes’s dyspeptic Duke Frederick, transformed by religion or not.

I felt sorry for Stephen Doak who made a fine job of both Charles the wrestler and Corin the shepherd and whose characters were rewarded with only cracked ribs and redundancy for their pains. Likewise Adam Sutcliffe’s Le Beau who, you feared, might be re-shuffled out of the household staff once Harry Stern’s Duke Senior returned to his principality - but Duke Senior was such a nice chap that perhaps my fears were unfounded. Both of these were warm and skillful performances.

Stephen Lee as Silvius made a pleasing, pleading shepherd ( a lot of sheep in them Arden parts apparently) and Kate Tulloch as Phebe looked sultry and sulky all at the same time coping well for someone whose fate is to be allocated to her rustic suitor pretty much whether she likes it or not. Gina Jackson made a bold and bawdy Audrey who you felt would give Touchstone a run for his money when they set up household together. Most put upon was probably Arthur Ford who seemed to suffer disproportionately for his interest in Audrey, when I felt he could probably be persuaded to give up in return for a few jugs of good ale. He and Michael Cornford were suitably supportive courtiers as well. And thank God that Richard Pedersen’s suitably rheumatic Old Adam appeared to survive Act One so that he could shake a funky tambourine at the end of proceeding's country dance. A word should be put in here for the fine singing of Chris Holmes in his other character role Amiens. It added greatly to the feel of the production and made you think that this was the sort of production that would have entertained Jacobean audiences. If directors Jean Carr and John Morton were aiming for this historical ambience I would say they succeeded and am glad of it .

The rural idyll was well created by Jude Chalk’s set, Robin Snowden’s lighting and Chris Drohan’s soundscape, although I was slightly worried by the hillock (grassy knoll?) which at times threatened to send some people to the Arden Cottage hospital. There was also a pleasing consistency in costuming which isn’t always the case in stagings of Shakespeare. As Orlando reminds us there is no clock in the forest and two and a half hours swept past us so quickly that both players and audience were on their way back to their respective cities before we knew it. A production that will surely enjoy more than a “bubble reputation”.

Photography by David Sprecher