A colourful cast of characters dance round the maypole at the end of Laurie Sansom’s gender-quizzical staging. Designer EM Parry fits them out with a dressing-up box of mix-and-match outfits: sheepskin coat, cowboy hat, naval tunic, wedding veil, bodice and ruff. It is not quite an Adam and the Ants video but it has a new-romantic sense of flamboyance and possibility. There are bare chests and crinoline underskirts.
It is the culmination of a Northern Broadsides production of Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy that is all about appearances. It takes place in a forest of hat stands beneath a canopy of dresses; a changing room where everyone is changed.
