The Curve, Leicester

As You Like It. 27th February 2009

Take two middle aged parents and a couple of twenty year olds and pour them into a brand new theatre, stir in some Shakespeare and what do you get? A memorable evening's entertainment.

The building is impressive. Discard any idea of the traditional layout of main entrance into a foyer leading to an enclosed auditorium and imagine an egg. The yolk is the auditorium, the translucent white the public area and half the shell is quite transparent. In fact all that separates the white from the pavement outside are huge sheets of glass. Beyond the patterns on the paving and the sparkling rotating bollards is the old theatre, now, judging by the swankily dressed people at the entrance, a top class venue for black tie events.

Inside the auditorium our eyes adjusted to a sloping stage, which created an effect of perspective as much of the action was set in the Forest of Arden. A loud strike of a drum started the action and drew attention to a single musician who created all the atmospheric music and sound effects on a variety of percussion and strange, unidentified stringed instruments.

I've not seen As You Like It before, but it involves siblings at loggerheads, best friends, gender changing, a fool and of course, love. My husband was happy, because it all ended happily. I shall have to reclaim my copy of the programme to give names to the lead characters, but all played well and the leads, Rosalind and Orlando fairly steamed with barely controlled passion - much needed to illuminate the meaning of the archaic language on occasions. The fool may have been the Paul Merton of his day, but I was a bit baffled by Elizabethan humour.

Whilst we were enjoying the spectacle, next door in the Studio theatre, Marc Warren (Hustle on TV) was in Pillowman. Acoustic walls between the two theatres can be raised to make one huge theatre and the enclosing walls lifted so that the public can see productions being prepared. Windows in perimeter rooms open on to workshops. The public, walking past, dropping in the the booking office or visiting the cafe, become spectators of the whole work in progress.

Dorothy Leiper