As I like it

I like to be nicely shocked at the theatre, and David Lan duly satisfies by giving As You Like It a sharp but appropriate Gallic make-over. Here in high heels, highish humour and a slinky, little black dress, comes Shakespeare's wittiest heroine, Helen McCrory's flirtatious Rosalind.

She is first seen sipping red wine with Sienna Miller's bland, blonde Celia, in a Parisian café and, judging by the girls' Hollywood hair, the post-war Forties. Lan has hit upon the brilliant notion of transporting Shakespeare's sexually ambiguous comedy of love and misunderstanding to France and post-war Paris.

The notion fits like a sleek, fashionable glove. Shakespeare after all peppers the play with French place-names. The post-war Paris of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone Signoret and Edith Piaf revelled in an atmosphere of philosophical speculation, melancholia and bitter-sweet romantic songs.

All these elements vividly coalesce in the world of As You Like It. Lan, though, decides against literally creating a Forest of Arden and instead makes the place interesting as a magical or dream-like state of mind.

Here people eventually come to their senses and, in the case of Rosalind and Orlando, to their right sexual identities. Songs and Tim Sutton's alluring music, with an on-stage, female accordionist, set the seal on the French period mood.

Richard Hudson's generally ravishing designs conjure up photo-montages of a bleak wintry Paris, from which Rosalind and Orlando are banished. Rain beats down upon misty orchards. Film noir flashes of thuggery and menace accumulate.

Arden itself, decorated with just a few, withered plants, bizarrely resembles a University arts centre. It sports an upright piano, artist's easel, piles of books and a double bass. Here the banished Duke's retinue, in overcoats and hats, with umbrellas at the ready, hardly look or behave as if they suffer in exile.

McCrory's Rosalind, cross-dressed in a chap's dark suit, occasional sun-glasses, permanent short-hair and a hat sometimes rakishly pulled down over her brow, makes a pretty convincing youth as she larks with Miller's poised but vocally rushed and subdued Celia.

McCrory even sports a voice that androgynously ranges high and low. She and remarkable Dominic West, whose vehement, smitten romancer of an Orlando is quite the finest thing on stage, stoke a serious erotic blaze. It is surely lust at first sight as, dazzled, they catch and lock each other's gaze in a visual equivalent of a half-Nelson.

Once in Arden, where Lan cuts and rearranges the text over-much, a flirty, delighted McRory, although more than a touch artificial, mischievously turns up the wooing heat, disguised as young, male Ganymede. The pair lead each other a complex, seductive dance.