SUMMER IN Britain is traditionally the season of Shakespeare - in both his time and ours.

And while Shakespeare's works run every month of the year in Stratford-upon-Avon, the warmer months still bring a fresh crop of plays.

Royal Shakespeare Company stalwart Dominic Cooke, recently appointed an RSC associate director, has previously directed Henry V and Coriolanus for them before becoming an associate director at the Royal Court, where he directed People Are Friendly and Plasticine.

He has returned to Stratford to direct Cymbeline, a first for Dominic and the first time the play has ever been staged in the RSC's Swan Theatre.

He said: "Cymbeline is an undeniably rich play, full of humour and feeling. "Like Shakespeare's other late plays, it shows characters facing the toughest obstacles in a universe which is ultimately shown to be a benign place.

"Cymbeline for me is about two key elements. The first is public - the invasion and colonisation of a small undeveloped nation by a superpower.

"The other element is more personal - the rites of passage of four young people as they evolve into adulthood, centring on their first experience of death."

It stars Emma Fielding as Imogen, the wronged heroine driven from her lover Posthumus by lies, against the backdrop of the British resistance to Roman rule.

Two young princes have been kidnapped from the royal household to be raised in the wild, and all three of these stories intertwine until the final scene of remarkable reconciliation.

Cymbeline runs at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until November 7. Tickets cost between £10 and £34. Box office 0870 609 1110.