What do Shakespeare's Globe and the Maddermarket Theatre have in common?

Both opened with a performance of As You Like It:  

The Globe in 1599 and the Maddermarket in 1921.

Now, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, As You Like It returns, set in another year of cultural awakening: 1967, the summer of love. Take a trip from the stifling court into the depths of the forest, where conventions – and costumes – are cast off and the trees cloak reality. As You Like It has all the elements of Shakespeare's great comedies: cross-dressing, unrequited love, an evil Duke taking the place of a banished one, brothers locked in combat, and, of course, a philosophical Fool. The cast's antics are infused with music and song, rousing the Sixties’ spirit.


The drama unfolds around the burgeoning love of young nobles Rosalind and Orlando. Fate sends them along different paths into the forest, where, they unite to "live beneath the sun" in pursuit of the simple life. And, indeed, life might have been simple… If only Rosalind hadn’t been disguised as a man called Ganymede, for Orlando to woo, if shepherdess Phoebe, disdaining shepherd Silvius' adulation, hadn't fallen for Ganymede and if comely country girl Audrey hadn't rejected steadfast William – for a Fool.

Directed by Chris Bealey