Imported Shakespeare, as you’ll like it

Its open space curtained into an intimate arena, Holyoke’s War Memorial Auditorium - on loan to the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, which is reclamating a home of its own in the long-abandoned 1919 Victory Theatre - turns out to be a suitably Globe-like setting. The encircling audience is close enough to catch every gesture played out on Jonathan Fensom’s charming pastoral set, in which panels depicting espaliered trees suggest a struggle between nature and human-imposed control.

The set hints at the conflict in store. The King of Navarre (Philip Cumbus, who starts out looking very serious indeed) has decided that he and his three closest friends must forswear all forms of entertainment - including female company - and knuckle down to three years of study. As luck, and a playful playwright, would have it, just then the Princess of France (Michelle Terry) and her three best friends arrive on an ambassadorial mission.

You can guess which impulse - academic vs. amatory - will win. But there’s so much fun to witness on the way to the tidy yet gratifying Jack-shall-have-Jill conclusion. In truth, you’d have to study up a bit beforehand to catch all the niceties of the verbal jousting, clearly a crucial courtship skill amid the Elizabethan beau monde. True to Shakespeare’s own tradition, however, the company tosses in plenty of physical shtick - and even the occasional flying baked good - to placate us ignorant groundlings.

Among a uniformly superlative cast, several performers achieve special distinction: not just the aforementioned royals, but their closest intimates, Rosaline (Thomasin Rand, fresh out of conservatory, yet remarkably assured) and above all, her romantic foil Berowne (“a man replete with mocks’’ is how they described “snarky’’ in those days), whom Trystan Gravelle plays with a fiery/sexy brilliance.

Paul Ready is also tremendously winning as Don Adriano de Armado, whose official description is “a Braggart from Spain.’’ Where most interpreters would pile on the posturing, Ready plays the courtier as a tentative doofus: he’s unduly impressed by the wit of his antic page, Moth (Seroca Davis), not to mention the overflowing assets of the requisite slattern, Jaquenetta (Rhiannon Oliver). Adorably dim, he provides a kindred perspective on the rarefied yet relatable courtship rituals unfurling before us.