PRINCIPAL CAST: Mariah Gale (Celia); Richard Katz (Touchstone); Forbes Masson (Jaques); Jonjo O'Neill (Orlando); Katy Stephens (Rosalind).

The first performance of this production took place on 18 April 2009.

"Tom Piper's tedious design makes an IKEA-look white backdrop for the court scenes open partially to reveal stacks of straw for a tree-less forest..."  ~ Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 29 April 2009, in Theatre Record 2009, Issue 9

"Tom Piper's design and Struan Leslie's choreography set the tone. Duke Frederick's court is a tyranny where black-costumed Elizabethans move in regimented order against an imposing, white-panelled wall. But, while Piper's back wall slowly opens up like an advent calendar to give us glimpses of a flowering countryside, the production's real dynamic comes from the shift towards spiritual enfranchisement."  ~ Michael Billington, The Guardian, 29 April 2009, in Theatre Record 2009, Issue 9

"And yet the ensemble isn't quite a fully working unit yet. Jacques's Seven Ages of Man speech is obscured by the way Clarence Smith's exiled Duke clumps around the thrust stage. [This was the second production for the RSC's ensemble of 2009 - 2011 and the reviews mentioned the fact often when writing about them, which is what this references.]"  ~ Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2009, in Theatre Record 2009, Issue 9