This most English of all of Shakespeare’s comedies gets a fresh look in Nica Burns’s newest and most beautiful West End theatre, @sohoplace.  Most of the play is set in the Forest of Arden, close to Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford upon Avon, but As You Like It’s themes of deposition, disguise and redemption are common to other of Shakespeare’s plays.  Shakespeare’s source was Thomas Lodge’s 1590 Rosalynde based on a medieval poem The Tale of Gamelyn, about three brothers, the youngest of whom was forced into exile by the eldest.  

There are two sets of brothers in As You Like It.  In the court, Duke Frederick has deposed his elder brother Duke Senior (both dukes played by Tom Edden but unwigged and uncloaked as the usurped) and Duke Senior is living, with his banished courtiers, as an outlaw in the Forest of Arden.  Senior’s daughter, Rosalynde (Leah Harvey) has been allowed to stay at court at the start of the play with her cousin Celia (Rose Ayling-Ellis) the usurper’s daughter. Oliver (Ben Wiggins) the elder brother of Orlando (Alfred Enoch) has cast out his younger brother Orlando.

Our first glimpse of the court sees Martha Plimpton as Madame Jaques, one of Duke Senior’s courtiers in courtly dress leaving and singing “Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind” the song about ingratitude.  The composer Michael Bruce is onstage at a baby grand piano which will become a grassy bank in the Forest of Arden.  Orlando will wrestle Charles (Dickon Gough) in a contest.  Duke Frederick changes his mind and banishes Rosalind but his own daughter Celia decides to go with her, Rosalind is disguised as a boy Ganymede and Celia as a peasant girl Aliena.