Despite the rain – which began as the curtain notionally went up, and which, after some fitful pauses, bucketed down throughout the second half – this was a fine As You Like It. The brave and soaking cast, and an audience enjoying itself far too much to mind the wet, seemed equally caught up in the sylvan adventures, cross-dressing shenanigans, rustic amusements and contented philosophisings that went on in Arden. The play turns crucially on the character of Rosalind in her guise as Ganymede, so if that part is inhabited well, and if there are good rustics, a convincing Jaques and a funny Touchstone, it is hard not to have a good theatrical time at a production of this play. That is why it works even as a school performance. In this production there is an excellent Rosalind, an excellent Touchstone, fine rustics, and very good Jaques: no amount of rain could dampen the pleasure they give. 
      Rebecca Johnson is the best Rosalind since Fiona Shaw took the part on the London stage ten years ago. Fiona Shaw has the height and figure to make a thigh-slapping Pantomime Prince look effete, and in that production the homoerotic implications of Orlando's wooing of a handsome boy were fully played up. In this production Rebecca Johnson is a girl in trousers throughout, a Rosalind failing to be a wholly convincing young male because of her complexion, the red in her lip, her fainting at the sight of Orlando's blood. It works very well; it makes one think that it was indeed Shakespeare's intention to have Ganymede something that the name implies ("Ganymede" and "catamite" have the same root; for the original youth of that name was stolen up to Olympus by Zeus to be the gods' cupbearer and his plaything precisely because of his boyish femininity.) 
      John Hodgkinson gives us a very funny Touchstone, aided by the sheep dotted about the greensward; and Christopher Godwin gives us a very plausible philosopher as Jaques, seeking and always finding the moral in things. With such a cast director Rachel Kavanaugh is able to create an Arden full of human feeling and truth, in which the vital necessity of love, and the vigour with which it must be felt, comes across as the greatest moral a Jaques or anyone else could draw.
AC Grayling