AFTER four years of Lucy Kerbel productions, Sprite has a new a director in charge for As You Like It (the audience’s choice of comedy for this summer’s show).

Step forward Alex Hassell, artistic director of The Factory, whose experimental, interactive version of Hamlet had a thrilling one-night stand at Ripley in 2008.

In the wake of Sprite’s one-off visit to the island on the castle lake for The Tempest last summer, the company has made a “conscious move” to re-examine its style of promenade shows.

Hassell had intended to stage scenes in the village, even one in a house window, but distracting peripheral noise made that wish impractical – although a far more distracting noise was to make Friday’s finale even more memorable.

And so Hassell and new location designer Nicky Bunch focused their scenes on more familiar Ripley Castle terrain: the walled gardens and assorted locations in the woodland once the story switches to the Forest of Arden.

The audience – a full house of 200 – was kept on the move, chivvied along by cast members either in song or in exhortations to speed on their way. Ideally, the changes could have been quicker to aid concentration and momentum, but there was always the joy of discovering another aspect of the castle grounds, be it Orlando’s house “on fire”, or Duke Senior’s forest den, or the trees bearing the poems of the love-struck Orlando (Alan Morrissey), held in place with an arrow, as he woos Rosalind (Katie McGuinness).

Nothing is overplayed for humour under Hassell’s charming direction. Instead he succeeds in conveying Shakespeare’s “deeply beautiful philosophical whimsy”, a spirit captured in the performances of Alex Barclay, Emma King, Nigel Hastings and Tony Taylor in his dual duke roles.

Rhys Meredith’s Jaques is melancholia personified, his Seven Ages of Man speech having just the right weight, while the heady woodland scent of romance is strong and magical in the hands of Morrissey and McGuinness, pictured above.

Hassell’s biggest innovation is to give Sprite’s ever-present joker, Jack Whitam, a licence to improvise in the fool’s role as Touchstone. Whitam stays in character and in period argot while riffing off the audience, commenting on choice of shoes and all the while seducing one “volunteer” into “marrying” him over a series of impromptu scenes.

Whitam keeps you on your toes, like a master of ceremonies should, while stimulating new buds of comedy from an old play. You expect the unexpected with The Factory’s shows and now Sprite is following suit, but nothing could have prepared you for the booming ten-minute burst of fireworks from a Ripley party function that purely by accident coincided with the whirling circles of fire to signal the start of the closing scene.

Such is the nature of live theatre in the wild woods, and even if such a coincidence never happens again, there are still plenty of fireworks in Whitam’s comic tour de force.

As You Like It, Sprite Productions, Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, until July 11. Box office: 01423 770632.