RALPH Fiennes, artistic director of Bath Theatre Royal’s 2025 summer season, turns from acting in Grace Pervades to directing, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at the theatre from 15th August to 6th September.

One of the most delightful romatic comedies, it is set in the Forest of Arden, where love is always in the air.

The cast is led by Harriet Walter playing the role of the melancholy Jacques, who delivers the Seven Ages of Man speech. Dame Harriet has forged a reputation in her more mature years for playing some of Shakespeare’s iconic male figures. In London she played in the famous Donmar all-female productions set in a women’s prison. She was Brutus in Julius Caesar in 2012, Henry IV is 2014 and Prospero in The Tempest in 2016.

Since then the sometime Dorset resident who was educated at Cranborne Chase School has written a number of books, the latest being Brutus and Other Heroines in 2016 and She Speaks, What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said in 2024. Now she turns her wit and fierce intelligence to the wry commentator Jacques, a nobleman banished by the Duke and living in the forest as an outlaw.

Starring in the Bath cast are also Irish comedian Dylan Moran as the clown Touchstone, with Gloria Obianyo in the central role of Rosalind, the young woman banished from her uncle’s court who dresses as a boy (Ganymede) and heads for the forest to find safety. Gloria is best known as a actor in films including Dune and Mission:Impossible. The 19-strong cast also includes Patrick Robinson (Ash from Casualty) and Charlie Rowe, known for his performances in Slow Horses and Wolf Hall, with Paul Jesson as Old Adam.

To find out more, visit the Bath Theatre Royal website.