The Forest of Arden is a surreal forest of flower-entangled ropes in this atmospheric As You Like It. After a starker beginning, with Tony Taylor as a robot-like servant in evening dress emerging to silently set the scene in what looks like a decaying tent, that forest descends upon the lovers and rustics and the melancholy Jaques and the play never leaves its rather magical embrace.

It all does occasionally become a little too drawn-out and fussy; moments like the first brief contact between Rosalind and Orlando where there is stillness and briskness and less stage business seem to better serve the progress and drive of the piece. But the casting is strong, designer Michael Hankin's set is gorgeous to look at and the eccentric and genial energy of Peter Evans' production does draw the audience in.

At its centre is a magnetic and intelligent Rosalind (Zahra Newman) paired with an Orlando (Charlie Garber) who makes excellent sense of what can sometimes be an awkward role. This Orlando is endearingly honest, with downcast eyes (which may account for his failure to recognise Rosalind in male disguise and in exile) while Newman's Rosalind pulls no punches in teaching him how to woo.

Newman is well supported by Kelly Paterniti's sharp Celia whose sudden falling for Orlando's once evil brother Oliver (Dorje Swallow), now converted to good by the power of events in the forest, is funny and believable.

John Bell is dryly amused and amusing as Jaques, the odd man out in the forest, whose cynical view of life and love is a counterpoint to all the prospective coupling going on around him.

There's the necessity for a fair deal of doubling among a cast of 11 and it comes off neatly, from Bell's gently affected French courtier Le Beau to Alan Dukes taking on and successfully differentiating the banished Duke Senior from his wicked brother Duke Frederick.

The rustics and servants don't always sound as if they belong to a different class to the courtiers in the forest but there's a gorgeous rural contemplation in Taylor's Corin and he also does a lovely turn as faithful old Adam, Orlando's geriatric servant. Emily Eskell's Phebe perhaps does not quite belong among the sheep but convincingly fixates upon Rosalind while she is Ganymede at the expense of dignified fellow shepherd Silvius (George Banders) and his honest but breaking heart.

Rosalind's wisdom sorts out this love tangle but it is left to Jacques to find a more practical solution to the earthy goings on of Audrey (Abi Tucker) and the jester Touchstone (Gareth Davies), a couple driven less by courtly romance than by lust.

Tucker also does an excellent job with the play's songs which, augmented by old fashioned mike and turntable, are made to fit most agreeably into the late 1950s setting suggested by Kate Aubrey-Dunn's costumes. Touchstone and Audrey indulge in an enjoyable piece of exuberant rock'n'roll. Rosalind favours the more conservative wide skirts of the '50s but Celia's elegantly high hemlines tell us that the '60s are coming and with them, perhaps, a change in attitudes.

There's much to enjoy in seeing Bell Shakespeare lose themselves in the all-embracing Forest of Arden.