As You Like It, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, review When she first encounters Alex Waldmann's Orlando at the wrestling match she is instantly smitten, audibly panting with love and desire. After that, of course, she assumes control in the gender-bending scenes in Arden. In her disguise as a boy, with a sharp haircut and a sock down her pants, she has more than a hint of the androgynous charisma of the young David Bowie, lithe, lean and fascinatingly enigmatic. The love play has a wonderful spark about it, for there is real chemistry between Nixon and Waldman, an engagingly nerdy chap despite his rippling musculature, who makes the disastrous fashion choice of sporting a Peruvian knitted hat, complete with tassels. When they kiss they really mean it - even though at this stage Orlando believes Rosalind to be a boy. The sexual frisson is electrifying. But there is great tenderness, too, and when, in one of the most beautiful lines in Shakespeare, Rosalind declares: "O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how fathom deep I am in love!" tears pricked my eyes. The production beautifully captures the play's movement from darkness into light. The usurping Duke is played with psychotic ferocity by a sinister, thuggish John Stahl, while the wrestling match is bone-crunchingly vicious and bloody. I wasn't convinced by the hand-jive routine to electro music employed to suggest the cold formality and repression of the court, but loved the open air rave at the play's end when it suddenly starts pouring with rain in a forest lit by fairy lights, and no one gives a damn. Among the supporting performances, Joanna Horton proves deeply touching as Celia, pining for a love of her own, while Nicolas Tennant miraculously succeeds in making Touchstone, by some distance the most tedious clown in Shakespeare, genuinely funny, even while sporting whiteface (aagh!) and a false red nose (aagh again!). In this Forest of Arden, it seems, wonders will never cease. Until Sept 28.