Shakespeare's late plays are in fashion: even in a supposedly cynical age, we seem to delight in their emphasis on forgiveness and renewal. Rachel Kavanaugh's open-air revival - the first in Regent's Park in 50 years - generates enough warmth to overcome the chilly summer evening.
With its blend of ancient Britain, classical Rome and renaissance Italy, Cymbeline poses obvious problems. But Jon Bausor has come up with a practical set, which looks like an Antony Caro sculpture, and Kavanaugh has sensibly opted for modern dress. So Cymbeline resembles a fossilised old soldier, the villainous Iachimo an Armani-suited smoothie and Imogen a summer-frocked heroine with a hint of Laura Ashley. Terry Davies' modern score pays off wittily in turning Cloten's love song into a bit of sub-Elvis rock - even if the dirge over Imogen's supposedly dead body scarcely needs musical adornment.
Kavanaugh's production brings out particularly well the contradictory nature of passion. Emma Pallant's excellent Imogen is no saint but a highly sexed woman who ecstatically cries: "O for a horse with wings" at the prospect of reunion with her banished husband. For Simon Day's poisonous Iachimo passion turns to near rape as, in Imogen's bedroom, he indecently peers under her nightie. And in Posthumus's hysterical diatribe after he thinks he has been cuckolded, Daniel Flynn plausibly shows how love can turn to hate against women in general.
Fans of Shakespeare's Globe may disagree but what I like about Regent's Park Shakespeare is that the audience is neither cajoled nor flattered: they are simply treated as observers. Proof that they pay close attention, however, came in the mixture of shock and delight with which they greeted the 37 revelations in Cymbeline's astonishing final act. It was also a felicitous idea to show Julian Curry's chair-bound king - finally reunited with his sons and daughters - restored to full health and whirling his military cane with delight. It supplied just that touch of magic that makes Shakespeare's late romances so infinitely moving.
· In rep until September 10. Box office: 08700 601811.
