‘If I were a woman…’ Jonathan Groff to play Rosalind in the RSC’s all-male As You Like It

Broadway star Jonathan Groff is set to play Rosalind in an all-male As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon this autumn, previewing from 26 September.

The production gives Groff his RSC debut and his first Shakespeare of any kind. He won a Tony for Merrily We Roll Along, took a nomination for playing Bobby Darin in Just in Time, and originated Melchior in Spring Awakening before joining the first company of Hamilton.

Screen audiences know him from Looking, Mindhunter and Glee, while a younger crowd knows his voice from Frozen. Groff has said he had never done Shakespeare before, and called the preparation with Evans and RSC emeritus director of voice Patsy Rodenburg “inspirational and exciting”.

Akinade brings his own following to Arden, from Russell T Davies’ Cucumber and Banana through to Heartstopper, where he played Mr Ajayi. Director Daniel Evans, also co-artistic director of the RSC, has said he wants the staging to feel “playful and joyful”, and to leave audiences talking about the world outside the theatre.

As You Like It plot

Rosalind is banished from the court of Duke Frederick, though not before she and young Orlando fall for each other. She sets off to find her exiled father in the Forest of Arden with her devoted cousin Celia, travelling in disguise as a young man, Ganymede. Orlando, in fear of his own life, escapes to the same forest and soon runs into Ganymede, who pledges to cure his lovesickness. To manage it, Orlando has to woo her, or rather he has to woo ‘him’. Then the games commence…

Shakespeare’s own company would have given Rosalind to a boy player, which put a male performer in a woman’s clothes pretending to be a man. Evans’s production restores that arrangement, and the courtship scenes in Arden gain a second set of pronouns to play with.

Who joins Jonathan Groff in the cast?

Fisayo Akinade plays Celia, while Elliot Barnes-Worrell plays Orlando, with Gary Wilmot in the dual roles of Duke Frederick and Duke Senior. Richard McCabe takes Jaques and Greg Haiste plays Touchstone, alongside a full company that includes Giles Cooper, Edward Judge, Luke McCall, Tim Preston and Caleb Roberts.

Anisha Fields designs the set and Colin Richmond the costumes, with lighting by Ryan Day, movement by Michela Meazza and music supervised by Theo Jamieson.

Book tickets for As You Like It at the RSC

Tickets for the Stratford-upon-Avon run are available now. Stratford sits a little over two hours from London Marylebone by train, so a matinee and dinner afterwards also works as a day out…