“I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it,” says Celia on first glimpsing the Forest of Arden. You won’t be wasting your time with Blanche McIntyre’s production, which may be short on foliage and any real sense of the pastoral, but more than makes up for any deficiencies with its giddy joy at the mad confusions of love.
It’s a production that takes its time, revelling in extended musical interludes that include a show-stopping and distinctly un-Elizabethan tap-dancing sequence. James Shapiro has suggested that As You Like It might be considered an embryonic musical – and there are times when McIntyre seems intent on proving him right. The production’s strength is a clarity of storytelling combined with strong, distinctive performances. This is mostly a pleasure, from its opening moments when the sombre and the comic collide at a funeral to its final campy celebration of new love blossoming.
At its big, beating, skittish heart is Michelle Terry’s winning Rosalind, who walks about in a daze and is lost as soon as Simon Harrison’s Orlando removes his shirt for the wrestling match. That emotional recklessness is also glimpsed in her dealings with her uncle who banishes her from court, and her cross-dressing antics with Orlando in the forest. The latter do not always meet with the approval of Ellie Piercy’s Celia, whose more strait-laced governessy anxieties make a fine foil to Terry’s unaffected openness.
There is excellent comic support, too, from Daniel Crossley as Touchstone, James Garnon as a wonderfully idiosyncratic and utterly contemporary Jacques, and Sophia Nomvete, who wrings every ounce of comedy from the role of Audrey. It is a warmly entertaining evening that only requires a touch more snappiness.
• At Shakespeare’s Globe until 5 September. Box office: 020-7401 9919.
