[In the following excerpted review of the 2000 Shakespeare season at Stratford-upon-Avon, Jackson explains that Greg Doran's production of As You Like It was dominated by setting, design, and costume, which overshadowed the individual performances and contributed to an artificial and unsubtle staging of the play.]

As You Like It, the first Stratford production by Greg Doran to have misfired, was all but designed off the stage by Kaffe Fassett and Niki Turner. The set, remarkable in itself, was too fussy for the good of the play (even after some modification). The actors' performances seemed by contrast to have been reduced to a display of energy and broad effect in order to compete with the vibrant colors and oversized greenery. For more than one observer the set's garishness and the scale of its central tree conjured up the Christmas pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. The play began well enough, with Oliver's garden and the court located in front of a monochrome panel of Elizabethan embroidery reaching up to the flies. The court costumes were elaborately Elizabethan in cut, and the fabrics (predominantly black and white except for Touchstone's) were gorgeously embroidered and patterned. In this oppressively monochrome world, Rosalind was discovered in 1.3 watched over by court ladies but embroidering a needlepoint in vivid colors that prefigured her escape to the forest. In Arden, however, the colors brightened as the play wore on, with huge floor cushions, a tree, and hanging foliage like giant versions of embroidery motifs. An array of jazzy pullovers replaced the stiff rectitude of the court costumes, though Phebe seemed to have escaped from a particularly camp production of The Bartered Bride, and Audrey, dressed as the Village Slut, lounged and leered accordingly. (As often, once the wintry phase had been passed, actors went barefoot in Arden as a sign of natural, untrammeled behavior.) But this overpowering artificial environment, together with Django Bates's music played by a band at the side of the stage—with amplification used for the songs—banished the sense of (relative) truth that distinguishes lively romance from frenetic nonsense. Running around seemed to take the place of genuine energy; subtlety was banished from such areas as the William-Audrey-Touchstone triangle and the courtship of Silvius and Phebe. Adrian Schiller was witty and acidulous as Touchstone, and Nancy Carroll made the most of Celia, listening acutely and supportively when the play demands it. Meanwhile Alexandra Gilbreath, perhaps compensating for a stolid Orlando, was too desperately charming as Rosalind and spent too much time doing laps around the stage. Ian Hogg doubled the two dukes, giving a broadly pathological usurper and an exuberant (but not always comprehensible) exile. It should be noted that on its transfer to London, this production was stripped of its scenery and performed in the Pit, the Barbican's studio theater—a very unusual step for a show from Stratford's main stage. By all accounts, it has improved wonderfully.