Shakespeare fans may be rubbing their hands with glee at the moment. They’ve been blessed with both “As you like it” this week and two (yes, two!) productions of “Twelfth Night” opening next week (Headington Hill Park and St Catherine’s College).

When I first heard that “As You Like It” (one of my favourite Shakespearean plays) was being squeezed into the clever concept of a Japanese setting, I must admit that I began to relish the opportunity to savage it. However, I have to hold my hands up and admit that I was partially wrong. Polly Findlay (the clever director) has used the idea that the French Forest setting would have been a world away from Shakespearean London, and the best way to create a distancing effect today was to set it in a new kind of foreign world. This isn’t a literal forest of wellies and wax jackets, but a state of mind. When the characters go off to the forest they take on new identities, new partners and new ideas. At the end one wonders if they’ll be able to settle back into real life.

As the photographs in the programme show, this is a pretty young cast playing pretty young things romping about in love and laughter. There are some very effective doubling of characters. Lorna Beckett shows her skill and ability by playing both Celia and Adam, shifting effortlessly from Old Yorkshire bloke to young gung-ho ‘jolly hockey sticks’ girl. The evening should belong to Lily Syke’s Rosalind, but she seems to lack the requisite spunk needed to power her way past the boys surrounding her. Instead the evening belongs to Mark Lowen as Orlando and Daniel Harkin as Touchstone. Lowen has grace, good looks and the voice of an actor born to play Shakespeare’s great young men. He delivers a performance that is thoughtful and shot through with good humour. Harkin sometimes kills the text by capering and mugging at the audience, but his performance is so energetic that you don’t really care that the occasional word is lost.

So here’s the big question: Is it any good? Well... it is and it isn’t. Some of the devices work really well. It’s worth going just to see the flock of sheep upstage everyone. Also there are some wonderful moments of beauty and clarity. However, there are moments when the whole conceit jars against what Shakespeare has written: characters refer to French places and people and yet clearly this isn’t France or even a British forest. Nonetheless, this is an interesting play with a very clever concept. Catch it if you can.

Ben Whitehouse, 05.06.03