This frothy old favourite doesn't hang together as a play, yet it always weathers well, its startling modernity and gloomy profundities neatly underpinning the wooings of aristocracy and peasants in the forest of Arden.
Under Jonathan Miller's direction, the dappled glade is pared back to a big, white-cube set, with felled trees strewn across the stage. The costume is 20th century, from the pin-striped mafiosi of the Duke's courtiers, to the hunting gear and shepherd's rags of the woodland inhabitants.
Miller aims for jocular punch and panache, with touches of lewdness. Thus Touchstone, philosophising to his fat shepherdess, grips his crotch a lot. Fair Rosalind (played with the usual twinkling warmth by Donna Dent) remains pure as driven snow, tinged with emotional sado-masochism in her cross-dressed deception of Orlando. Elsewhere, the Duke's courtier Le Beau becomes a twitching, unctuous faggot; and Phoebe, just to provide some colour, is a lumpen hippie, rolling her own ciggies. The biggest groan is the Duke's wrestler, like something from a Dublinised version of Bouncers.
As the Duke, Gerard McSorley gives an urgent, menacing performance, while as Touchstone, Pat Kinevane cuts a strange and vivid figure.
Despite these gems, and the polish of the production, this is a good-humoured old snooze with no rhyme or reason to it.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
Until April 1. Box office: 00 353 1 874 4045
