Touring a Shakespeare play in the Bard’s own lifetime certainly wasn’t dull for the actors. As Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, put it in an Oxford Times interview: “I think it was very kick, bollock and scramble, it was very rough and ready . . . actors were pushed on to the stage and told to get on with it.”

It’s not like that any more, of course, but challenges still remain. For instance, how do you make a pastoral comedy feel natural in a formal space? That’s the intriguing question facing director James Dacre as he brings the Globe’s As You Like It into the distinctly sober, historic surroundings of the Bodleian Library’s Old Schools Quadrangle.

His answer is to focus attention on the play itself through high-speed physical action: the bare-chested wrestling match between Orlando (Gunnar Cauthery) and professional wrestler Charles (Ben Lamb), for example, is staged with sweaty realism. Having won the fight, Orlando has to flee to the Forest of Arden, which then magically appears in a beautifully painted backdrop (designer Hannah Clark).

Although As You Like It is often described as a pastoral comedy, it has distinctly dark undertones: Orlando may be reunited with his beloved Rosalind in the forest, but they’ve only gone there to escape the wrath of Duke Frederick. Director Dacre focuses on the drama quite as much as the comedy: he uses the iconic “All the world’s a stage” speech, for instance, in two quite different ways: first, right at the beginning, adapted as a jolly song telling us to turn off our mobile phones, then in its normal place, with Jaques delivering it as a sober summing-up of life from beginning to chilling end: “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” In contrast, the scene in which Rosalind, disguised as the boy ‘Ganymede’, discovers Orlando’s loving verses pinned to trees is played as high comedy to great effect.

At times there’s a tendency to scamper through dialogue and jokes a bit too fast: Gregory Gudgeon’s splendidly over the top Touchstone suffers somewhat as a result. But the girly-friend relationship between Rosalind (Jo Herbert) and her unusually sparky cousin Celia (Beth Park) works very well, as does the decision to turn Jaques from the usual melancholic male to spirited female (Emma Pallant). Finally, praise to last-minute replacement Fergal McElherron, for a bravura performance playing both Duke Senior and his usurping brother, Duke Frederick.

Performances continue until July 31. Box office: www.oxfordplayhouse.com or call 01865 305305.