It seems a pity to occupy The Swan, reserved last season for Jacobethan rarities, with one of Shakespeare's box-office bankers. And this RSC debut production by Gregory Thompson fails to understand the dynamics of the space.
So much in this pastoral comedy depends upon a design that can whisk us quickly from court to country. But Colin Peters has come up with a complicated set in which a tilted, snow-covered rake eventually breaks down into single upended panels on industrial trolleys. And, although Thompson seeks to evoke the Forest of Arden through persuading the entire company to pose as standing elms, he crucially neglects the sightlines. Thus in the vital scene where Rosalind discovers the plethora of love-verses left by Orlando I literally couldn't see the wooed for the trees.
But something even more important is missing from this production: the idea that "love is merely a madness". This is a play about the irrational ecstasy of passion, but there is little sign of that in Nina Sosanya's Rosalind. She has many good qualities, but you simply don't believe that she is "fathoms-deep in love" or driven to desperation by erotic obsession. What you get is a controlled, intelligent performance.
That criticism applies to the production as a whole. Time and again it notches up good points. Orlando's initial degradation, for instance, is clearly signalled by having him sawing logs before the action starts. But what I miss is much sense of the cruel extremes either of Duke Frederick's tryannical court or the harsh forest.
However, John Killoran is an unusually engaging Touchstone, and Natasha Gordon is a highly expressive Phebe who really does put the evil eye on her shepherd-lover. And Naomi Frederick's Celia, who at one point mysteriously turns into a stricken deer, watches Rosalind's mock-wooing with a genuinely frozen horror. Clearly there is a mind at work in this production. What it lacks is the pulsating passion that can turn Shakespeare's comedy into a transcendent, Mozartian experience.
· Until November 8. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
