As you like it – RSC Stratford review by Philip Gooden

26 September – 7 November 2026

Someone at the RSC must like As You Like It since this is the third production they’ve staged in as many years. In 2023 Geraldine James was Rosalind in an elegiac production whose genuinely winning feature was that many of the cast were of pensionable age. The following year saw an outdoor presentation which I remember for its jolly music and ensemble spirit. Now, under the inventive direction of Daniel Evans, we are invited to look at the play in yet another light.

To begin with, this is As You Like It with an entirely male cast so that we share something of the experience of Shakespeare’s audience, though with grown men instead of boys in the four females roles. The US actor Jonathan Groff offers up a brisk, strapping Rosalind while Fisayo Akinade provides a more supple, feminine Celia and one who seems to be having a great time too. The alliance between this pair  can sometimes seem like a standard girls’ boarding-school friendship and to have the cousins played by men makes us appreciate afresh the authentic bond linking them.

And they need such mutual support because Duke Frederick, who has usurped his older brother Duke Senior (Gary Wilmot in both parts, respectively chill and warm), really is a tyrant in the making. Surrounded by a black-clad entourage, he loves nothing better than a testosterone-charged wrestling match; when he slaps Celia for her defence of Rosalind there is a gasp from the audience. The Act One set (Anisha Fields), with a stage floor like a frozen pond and an unbroken white backdrop, makes for a cold court, something which is often underplayed in the drama.

Arden is represented by a expanse of sheep-nibbled turf backed by a great slope of long grasses, winding paths and rock that towers over the characters like an arrested green wave. This isn’t a piece of pastoral, more a chunk of real-life landscape brought in by the truckload. A Welsh landscape, as it happens, to judge by the accents of some of the forest’s inhabitants and by their harmonious singing. The costumes (Colin Richmond) have a ragged lived-in quality which contrasts with the militaristic sheen of the court outfits.

As a trespasser into this not-quite-paradise, Elliot Barnes-Worrell is a straightforward and clear-spoken Orlando, a foil to the more devious Rosalind. Caleb Roberts is effective too as Oliver, at first contemptuous of his brother and then managing the transition – one of many changes in a play of sudden shifts – to the penitent lover of Celia. Richard McCabe gives the most affecting Jaques I’ve seen, at first appearing like a sozzled afternoon dandy in a Soho pub and then catching himself by surprise as he reaches the end of the famous seven ages of man speech (‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’).

You can really believe it when he announces at the end that he’s going to join the equally changed Duke Frederick and turn hermit.

The broadly comic characters in Arden are all well-realised in a production that plays close attention to the text. Among many in the cast making their RSC debut, Rhys Parry Jones is the ‘true labourer’ Corin as well as a rather butch Hymen while Tim Phoebe provides a prim and proper Phoebe.

There was a very extended glitch on the Press Night at Stratford when the great white backdrop jammed in its ascent and prevented the emergence of the Forest of Arden. The audience, I’m happy to say, showed British phlegm and patience and greeted the eventual resumption of the action with applause and cheers. They did likewise with a standing ovation at the conclusion of this thoroughly interesting and idiosyncratic production of As You Like It.

★★★★☆ Philip Gooden, 7 October