As he likes it so much, Ian Brown is staging Shakes-peare’s comedy As You Like it at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for this play,” he says. “I did a small-scale version of it with seven actors, while I was running TAG in Glasgow, in about 1987, when we took it into schools, and I always felt it would be nice to do it as a full-scale version.”

The resulting production, now in the last week of its autumn run, is among the best of Ian’s tenure as artistic director of the Leeds theatre, bearing out his love of Shakespeare’s woodland comedy of cross-dressing and wrestling, philosophy and love letters, Rosalind and Orlando.

“There’s something about it that’s always appealed to me. Rosalind is a particularly fine character; a wonderful creation. For someone to have written that part for a boy actor of 13 or 14 and for role still to work today is amazing,” he says.

Shakespeare’s sunny, song-filled play of beautiful poetry and heartfelt passions revolves around Rosalind, Duke Senior’s irrepressible daughter, finding freedom as she pursues love in disguise in the Forest of Arden.

“The plot is quite thin; Shakespeare gets that out of the way pretty quickly and then explores the theme of coupling and love,” says Ian, who is drawn to Rosalind’s quick wittedness and her tendency for her thoughts to run ahead of her.

“She has to think on her feet and is way ahead of Orlando. She does fall in love with him, but she delays the moment of revelation of who she is [when in her disguise] because she wants to explore the pitfalls of love – and for someone who has no history of love, she does seem to explore it in such a knowledgeable way.”

As You Like It was written in the wake of the rather heavier Henry V and Julius Caesar.

“Shakespeare wanted to give people what they would like, so he pretty much put it on the tin,” says Ian.

“It’s a classical story that’s based on revenge and finding true love in adversity, like a prototype Romeo And Juliet, except that it doesn’t end tragically.”

Ruari Murchison’s set design plays a key role in Ian’s production. “The image that we’ve taken from the play is that there’s a lot of conscious acknowledgement that we’re in a play and that there are plays going on within the play – and it does have the famous speech about ‘all the world’s a stage’,” says the director.

“So we’ve made a set where you’re aware the forest is not real but feels real at the same time. You see the mechanics of creating it, as well as having that setting.”

In other words, you can see the wood for the trees.

• As You Like It runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700.