8 October 2026
When I last saw Jonathan Groff on stage as Bobby Darin in Just in Time, I was sitting in the front row at New York’s Circle in the Square. In my 2025 review, I hailed him as “Broadway’s new go-to Mr Song and Dance Man. A new Greatest Showman is born.”
Today I go one step further and crown him Stratford’s new prince of Shakespeare after a triumphant RSC debut as Rosalind.
And what a delicious role in which to claim that crown. Shakespeare’s glorious heroine has wit, appetite, courage and enough emotional intelligence to run rings around practically everyone she encounters. Groff brings the charisma that made his Bobby Darin irresistible to this wonderfully resourceful young woman, discovering another thrilling outlet for his seemingly inexhaustible talent.
Daniel Evans directs an all-male company, with Fisayo Akinade (excellent) as Celia and a gym-buffed Elliot Barnes-Worrell as a hunky Orlando. The casting opens up the play’s intricate games of disguise and desire, giving its romantic entanglements an extra charge. Here is a comedy in which falling in love means taking a chance on someone – and, just as dangerously, allowing them to see who you really are.
Banished from court, Rosalind escapes with her cousin Celia to the Forest of Arden (no trees at Stratford – in Anisha Fields’ striking design it’s more a grassy mound in rural Wales), where she disguises herself as the young man Ganymede. Encountering Orlando, the object of her own affections, she offers to cure his lovesickness by having him practise his wooing on her.
With sexual tension hanging heavy in the air, what could possibly go wrong?
For an actor, it is a magnificent opportunity: a man playing a woman playing a man who invites another man to pretend he is a woman. For Rosalind, it is the perfect hiding place from which to conduct an extraordinarily revealing experiment. She can ask the questions she longs to ask, test the answers and take delicious liberties with the man she loves.
Groff, Tony Award winner as Best Actor in a Musical as Franklin Shepard in the musical revival of Stephen Sondheim‘s Merrily We Roll Along, is a glorious fit for that mixture of confidence and vulnerability. His Rosalind’s delight in the game is infectious; beneath the cleverness is the much more touching possibility that her own heart might be broken. That tension gives the comedy its pulse. However brilliantly she directs this romantic rehearsal, she still has a personal stake in the outcome.
There is something particularly satisfying about watching a performer celebrated for musical theatre tackle a role with such a formidable command of language. Rosalind’s words are her greatest resource: she teases, challenges, invents and seduces with them. Groff’s theatrical instinct makes that verbal abundance feel entirely at home in his repertoire. Only the US pronunciation of Duke as Doook betrays his roots in the colonies. His delivery is confident, engaging and I for one cannot wait for his next Shakespeare challenge.
The Welsh musical dimension adds another layer of feeling. With Theo Jamieson overseeing the music, communal singing by the ‘Arden 7’as they have been dubbed within the company gives this woodland community a moving sense of belonging. Another genius jaw-dropping musical ‘moment’ has Gareth Snook as slutty shepherdess ‘Audrey’ with towering Patsy Stone beehive and baby doll negligee breaking out like Beyonce complete with backing boyband to sing about putting a ring on it. I thought i was going to combust with laughter. Gareth, you destroyed me!
Richard McCabe’s Jaques, meanwhile, brings a welcome melancholy to the festivities: even in paradise, someone will find a reason to stand apart.
What makes the evening so rewarding is its generosity towards human foolishness. These people make extravagant declarations, misunderstand their own desires and behave absurdly. Shakespeare loves them for it. Evans’s production invites us to do the same.
And at the production’s beating heart is Groff, adding another extraordinary leading role to a career that becomes more exciting with every new turn.
Act One might have taken a little while to get going, but the pace soon quickened and, after the interval, I was doubled over with laughter. The last time I had this much fun at an RSC show was more than 40 years ago, watching Judi Dench and Donald Sinden spar in a Raj-set Much Ado About Nothing. At the final moment of the final scene – spoiler alert: all’s well that ends well – hot tears were cascading down my cheeks. I found the emotion completely overwhelming. This hot ticket is unmissable.
As You Like It plays at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 7 November 2026. Book tickets.
