The opening moments of As You Like It at the Globe arrive like a fever dream from a particularly well-funded fancy dress party: towering wigs, dresses with silhouettes that seem to defy structural engineering, and an overall atmosphere that Time Out’s theatre editor Andrzej Lukowski describes as ‘Marie Antoinette-on-acid’. It is, by any measure, a lot. And then the court erupts into the Forest of Arden, the frippery falls away, and something genuinely warm takes over.
Running at Shakespeare’s Globe from 23 August to 25 October 2026, this production of Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy is co-directed by Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine, with design by Paul Wills. It is one of those shows that solves the play’s central problem before the audience has time to notice there was one.
Finding the forest: what Holmes and Josephine get right
As You Like It is, at its core, a play about a large cast of eccentrics adrift in a wood, bound together by low-stakes romantic entanglements and a great deal of philosophical rambling. Productions can easily lose the thread, leaving audiences two hours in and none the wiser about who, say, Silvius actually is. Holmes and Josephine sidestep that trap by making every character as vivid as possible, both visually and in personality, so that no one disappears into the scenery of Wills’s whiteboard forest.
Lola Shalam plays the high-strung romantic lead Rosalind, and Gracie Oddie-Jones brings an amusingly laidback posh-girl energy to Celia. Josephine herself takes the role of Orlando, playing the insecure wannabe-geezer with an insider’s confidence. Katherine Pearce’s Jaques is a quietly lovely piece of work: sensitive and downbeat rather than thunderously melancholic, which is the trap the role usually springs.
Jonnie Broadbent plays Touchstone, according to the Globe’s own production listing, in a look Lukowski can only describe as ‘French gimp’. It is, apparently, scene-stealing. The report refers to the character by the name Jonathan Broadbent, though the Globe’s listing gives the first name as Jonnie.
One of the production’s quieter pieces of ambition sits with Colm Gormley, who, according to Shakespeare’s Globe, takes on the triple role of Duke Senior, Duke Frederick and Corin. Playing both dukes, the exiled and the usurper, in the same production is a choice that concentrates the play’s dynastic tension into a single performer, and it gives Gormley an unusual range to cover across the evening.
Practical matters: tickets, timing and the 20-minute interval
The show runs for 2 hours 45 minutes, including a 20-minute interval, giving audiences at the open-air Globe a natural moment to take stock of the Bankside air and the Thames light beyond the stands. Tickets range from £5 to £85, with the lower end covering the standing groundling experience that has defined the Globe since it opened. The venue sits at 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, SE1 9DT, accessible from Blackfriars, Mansion House or London Bridge.
The creative team extends to Bethan Clark, who serves as Fight and Intimacy Director on the production, a credit that speaks to the care taken with the physical staging of a comedy that, however pastoral its reputation, carries its share of violence and tenderness in close proximity.
Holmes, who Lukowski identifies as Globe deputy, has a track record with Shakespeare’s comedies of finding the midpoint between the Bard’s own sensibilities and something more ironic and contemporary. This production carries that quality without the self-consciousness that sometimes accompanies it. The late-season slot, when the Globe often programmes more demanding work, might have suggested a thornier evening. It turns out to be nothing of the sort.
As Lukowski puts it in his Time Out review: this As You Like It is ‘a burst of late summer sun’. Performances continue through to 25 October 2026, with both matinee and evening slots available across the run.