A firm favourite among Shakespeare’s comedies, and including some of his best loved characters, As You Like It runs the glorious gamut of pastoral romance; cross-dressing and love-notes, poetry and brilliant conversation, gentle satire, slapstick and passion.

As You Like It follows Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke, who falls in love with Orlando at a wrestling match. Her usurping uncle, jealous of her popularity banishes her from court. Disguised as a boy she leaves with her cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone, to search for her also-banished father in the Forest of Arden. Here she meets Orlando, who, having fled from a brother wishing to kill him, has spent his time pining for Rosalind. In her new role as a young man, the disguised Rosalind encourages him to practice his wooing techniques on her, always playing hard to get while helplessly falling ever more deeply in love with him.

As You Like It director Thea Sharrock’s previous credits include the West End productions of A Voyage Round My Father and Equus, Happy Now and The Emperor Jones at the National Theatre and Cloud Nine at the Almeida theatre.

As You Like It plays alongside Romeo And Juliet, Troilus And Cressida, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Frontline, Helen and A New World – A Life of Thomas Paine in Shakespeare’s Globe’s summer 2009 season.

For more about As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe read the First Night Feature.