'Shakespeare is there for anyone to grab'

As the second play in the Ralph Fiennes/Theatre Royal Bath Season, William Shakespeare's timeless comedy, As You Like It, takes to the stage in the West Country next week, JEFFREY DAVIES talks to one of its stars - Olivier Award-winning actor Dame Harriet Walter

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FOR Rosalind and Orlando, it is love at first sight, but family feuds are destined to keep the young would-be lovers apart. When Rosalind is banished, she and her cousin Celia escape to the Forest of Arden, where they find that the possibilities for love and connection are infinite.

The second play in the Ralph Fiennes/Theatre Royal Bath Season, William Shakespeare's timeless comedy, As You Like It, takes to the stage in the West Country next week directed by Ralph Fiennes.

It stars Olivier Award-winning actor Dame Harriet Walter; rising star Gloria Obianyo; Irish comedian and writer Dylan Moran, and Casualty's Patrick 'Ash' Robinson.

"Just Harriet is fine," Dame Harriet Walter replied modestly when I asked her how she would like to be addressed during our interview ahead of her arrival in Bath this month.

For anyone unfamiliar with William Shakespeare's 'sparkling' comedy As You Like It, what awaits them I put to the most engaging actor?

"It's about hope and love and renewal. I play Jaques who fights against all that really. He's called 'melancholy Jaques' and he's there to kind of remind us of another melancholy side to life," Harriet told me succinctly.

A prominent character in As You Like It, many people remember Jaques for delivering one of Shakespeare's best-known speeches: 'All the World's a Stage' which, according to some academics, compares life with theatre and further suggests life is but one big performance.

"I would say people know the first two lines, yes. It's a speech that sits well within the play, but it stands on its own as well," Harriet replied.

A wonderful play. What is it about As You Like It that Harriet particularly likes?