"As You Like It". RSC, Stratford

As You Like It is traditionally a play about young love. Of the four couples who get married in it, three were smitten the moment they first laid eyes on each other. And Phebe’s Marlowe-inspired exclamation, ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’ captures not just the joy of love, but the thrill of experiencing it for the first time, eyes locked across a sweaty disco floor.

It’s all the more surprising, and remarkable, therefore, that the RSC’s latest iteration turns that principle on its head, and doesn’t just succeed, but reveals new tones, shades of meaning, expanses of joy and corners of poignancy in the process.

This As You Like It is performed by a troupe of gracefully aging thespians (supported by a gaggle of young helpers in minor roles). But if that were all it was then the point of the production would be disappointingly limited. It would effectively just be saying, ‘Old actors can play young roles too, you know’, to which the answer would be, ‘Yes, we know.’ Ian McKellen’s Hamlet and Derek Jacobi’s Mercutio are two recent examples (although it’s arguable that Jacobi’s attempt proved the exact opposite – but that’s another discussion). In Omar Elerian’s production the setup is more complex and intriguing: they aren’t just old actors: they are actors who all took part in a production of As You Like It in 1978, and are having a reunion to reprise their roles. To underscore this point, it’s explained at the start that in the intervening years one of the cast (who played the old retainer Adam) has died, and his role will be taken by an old coat.

It’s a multi-layered illusion: the reunion is a fiction. We are watching actors playing actors playing characters that are themselves recreations of characters from the past, just as in the play itself, Rosalind would in Shakespeare’s day have been played by a man playing a woman playing a man pretending to be a woman.

So as well as being performed by older actors, these roles are also memories: reincarnations of triumphs from four decades ago. And they feel as though they have matured over the years, like a fine wine. Orlando and Rosalind still have the buzz of young love, but here that love is deepened by an accompanying aura of wisdom and experience. The overall effect is one of combined nostalgia and giddy excitement. And Shakespeare’s lines sound every bit as good coming out of Geraldine James at 72 as they did from Pippa Nixon in her 30s or Juliet Stevenson in her 20s. This production is not age-blind; it’s age-acknowledging, age-focussed. And it proves that skill and talent are the prime requirements for performing Shakespeare – not an arbitrary allegiance to years spent alive.

Normally I wince when comic characters in Shakespeare start talking in modern English – and especially when they get most of their laughs from their own added lines. But in this case it made perfect sense. Michael Bertenshaw (Oliver) began the show out of character, explaining the concept; the set was a plain rehearsal room; and Touchstone introduced himself as ‘James Hayes, classical actor’. We were one remove from the text, so newly minted interpolations felt natural – and Hayes was one of the funniest deadpan Touchstones I’ve ever seen, his lantern jaw and stumbling elegance recalling another comedy icon from the 70s, Tommy Cooper.

As a climax to the first half, the cast sing Blow, blow thou winter wind accompanied by a band of old rockers – with a blistering guitar solo from a guy who played on John Lennon’s Imagine album. It’s as if every aspect of the show continues the theme of youth’s continuity and blossoming in age.

I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of the staging. The more elaborate technical set-pieces, like the huge gantry carrying the band down from the sky, or the gorily realistic dead stag, seemed out of touch with the simple and convincing notion of the plain rehearsal room – and they also detracted from the gut-punch of the final moments. But I loved the touch of lowering a couple of strip-lights and using them as swings in a conscious nod to another memory from half a century ago, the Peter Brook Midsummer Night’s Dream. This wasn’t reference for reference’s sake: it was another call back to youthful memories, reimagined for today.

Elerian saves his biggest coup de theatre for the final scene. In place of Hymen’s appearance, the deus ex machina in this production comes when the rehearsal-room background is wrenched away to reveal a full, lush, verdant Forest of Arden, and we hear the voices of the cast from forty years ago reciting the same lines their older selves have just delivered. It’s poignant and breathtakingly beautiful – and also makes the point that this As You Like It isn’t about ‘young’ versus ‘old’. They are united, and age can neither wither nor stale this timeless text. In that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a Duke and his friends will always be playing.