A SUMMER’S evening at Arley hall was the perfect setting for a unique performance of Shakespearean comedy As You Like It, by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

The all-male cast, who perform in the tradition favoured by the Bard himself, had the crowd of around 300 in stitches as they presented the hilariously confusing love story which centres on heroine Rosalind.

After falling in love at a wrestling match, she is outcast by her uncle the Duke and, along with cousin Celia, head off for the forest of Arden disguised as men in search of her lost love and banished father.

Cue hurried costume changes and side splitting turns from the incredibly talented cast of musicians and actors as a boy playing a girl disguises herself as a boy and pretends to be a girl in order to woo a boy who doesn’t know that the boy is in fact the girl he has previously fallen in love with.

Among the highlights for me was the infamous soliloquy ‘the seven ages of man’ delivered impeccably by an outstanding Jacques who doubled up as and performed an equally star turn as Phoebe, the dim-witted dame who attempts to woo Rosalind while she is disguised as a boy.

Picnic, sunshine, Shakespeare - what could be better. Can’t wait for the next visit to the region from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.