As You Like It

Eternal summer reigns in Shakespeare's woodlands: leafy playgrounds for gentle mischief, romantic magic and benign transformations. And actual trees are about the only thing missing from Thea Sharrock's exceptionally witty and touching Globe production of 'As You Like It' - a comedy on paper, but, alas, not always in performance. In this jaunty and improbable lark, Rosalind (the recently exiled daughter of an exiled duke) roams about the forest of Arden disguised in men's clothing, accompanied by her devoted cousin Celia and their rather tedious fool, Touchstone. Here, she shows far more interest in pulling the wool over the eyes of Orlando (the runaway nobleman who's been strewing the woods with poetry praising her) than in locating her father and his followers (also in the woods, preoccupied with deer-shooting and melancholy).

In Naomi Frederick, Sharrock has found a Rosalind who is vulnerable, feisty and utterly charming: it's a pleasure to watch her with Laura Rogers's Celia as they tease each other knowingly and shriek with excitement over Rosalind's unwitting love interest. Jack Laskey's Orlando, despite his fey appearance, puts in a wonderful turn in a WWF-style wrestling match staged among the groundlings, where he beats a champion fighter whose neck looks thicker than his thighs. It's a shame that his emotional range isn't as resourceful as his fighting technique, but Frederick has more than enough heart for them both.

The rustic and comic extras are remarkably good at finding the humour in their speeches and tickling the audience with it. Dominic Rowan's Touchstone plays the crowds with dandy-ish élan. And Tim McMullan's makes the speeches of the Duke's philosopher Jacques (which include the oft-quoted 'Seven Ages of Man') sonorous and genuinely serious: this Jacques is a reformed rake whose cavalier curls sit convincingly on his exhausted ennui. Ripening joy, not sorrow, is the keynote here though, and it's a feeling that the whole disparate cast communicate, with a wonderful mix of humour and gravity.