As You Like It

Having seized power from her elder sister, Duchess Frederica struggles to control a court on the brink of civil war. The solution: to exile under pain of death the rightful heir to the Dukedom, her own niece and the people’s favourite, Rosalind. Meanwhile Orlando finds himself the victim of a cruel and archaic hereditary system exposing him to the fatal plots and ploys of his elder brother, Oliver. Fleeing their homes, the company including a fool, a servant and Frederica’s daughter Celia, escape into the Forest of Arden along with the hero and heroine in search of the rightful Duchess. What they discover however, is a place where freedom of expression and playfulness can, for the first time, triumph over the social constraints and expectations of ‘the envious court.’