As You Like It review – Jonathan Groff leads a joyous, all-male revival at the RSC

“Now we go in content to liberty and not to banishment,” announced Fisayo Akinade’s Celia to Jonathan Groff’s Rosalind as they escape the imprisonment of the grey-hued court and set off for the Forest of Arden.

Cue an artificial flash of lightning and a stormy night. Followed by a great shower of sparks that looked like fireworks. The heavy backdrop at the back of the stage, staggered up a few feet, offering a tantalising glimpse of a semi-naked man sprawled on green grass. And then, nothing.

An 80-minute technical fault afflicted the opening night of the RSC’s new all-male production of As You Like It with the audience sitting patiently (or heading for the bar) as stagehands with torches, hard hats and hammers manually manoeuvred the scenery behind the backdrop.

But even that couldn’t dampen the bucolic joy of the eventual revelation of Anisha Fields’s ravishing set, not so much a wood as a verdant grass-covered sward, where characters pop up from behind tufty hillocks, as they luxuriate in the delight of the simple life.

Daniel Evans’ bold, clear direction starkly outlines the contrast between the oppressive black and white court from which best friends and cousins Rosalind and Celia escape a dictator’s grasp, and this idyll where people find love, self-realisation and the ability to treat others with respect and love.

Under Ryan Day’s impressionistic light, and amidst the sound of birdsong, Evans throws in a male voice choir from his native Wales, singing in heart-rending harmony the hymns that are blended into Theo Jamieson’s tuneful score, or providing an impromptu backing group when shepherdess Audrey (a wonderful Gareth Snook) breaks into a dance routine while belting out Raye’s “Where Is My Husband!”.

It’s all good fun but it’s also a sharply intelligent reading of a play that, for all its poetic qualities, can tumble over its own tangles. The fact that the cast are all men gives additional resonance to the complications of gender and feeling that hide within its plot’s plain sight.

When Groff as Rosalind pretending to be a man called Ganymede strikes an intentionally masculine pose, it’s all the funnier because he is so clearly really a man, clothed in hiking shorts and a fetching jerkin. Yet when he and Elliot Barnes-Worrell’s Orlando engage in games of seduction, where Orlando is supposedly pretending that this bloke is his beloved, there’s a real charge between them, a confusion of desire that stills the laughs.

Groff is superb in his Shakespearean debut, eyes flashing both with merriment and righteous indignation, taking the verse with astonishing speed and verve. His Rosalind is clever, proud and commanding, always in charge. There’s a glorious moment when the production takes a line about her accent – Groff is speaking in his native American – and turns it into a joke; ironically, given his Tony Award-winning success on Broadway as a musical star, he doesn’t get to sing but all his charisma is channelled into a quicksilver portrayal.

He’s more than matched by Akinade, best known from Heartstopper, but a considerable Shakespearean actor in his own right. Constantly playing with his braids, his face alert, his Celia is both loving and petulant, finding the humour between the lines. What’s so impressive is his watchfulness. Celia doesn’t have that much to say, but in the way he looks at Rosalind, in his doubt about her developing relationship with Orlando, Akinade’s face registers every thought and feeling of doubt, distrust and joy. It’s a truly cherishable reading.

The production is full of unusual tenderness and warmth, whether it’s the gentle way the choir tend to the dying Adam or the thoughtfulness with which Richard McCabe’s unusually touching Jacques finds his way through the famous “All the World’s a Stage” speech. Gary Wilmot, doubling both as the bad and good Duke, makes one terrifying and the other genial, while Tim Preston is a pure joy as the straight-talking Phoebe who falls for Ganymede.

The play has been cut in places to move it along and there are some losses. But this is a subtle and lively version of one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, full of light, laughter and love.