Theatre - A little-performed Shakespeare play is a summer night's dream, writes Michael Portillo Cymbeline Open Air Theatre, London NW1

There once was an advertising campaign that asked adults if they had forgotten how good cornflakes tasted. Evidently there are some things that we sample during childhood and then give up unless prompted to return. For me, the Open Air Theatre in London's Regent's Park (where the actors compete for our attention against the noise of aircraft and police sirens) is a case in point. I used to go there as a teenager, mainly to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. On one occasion I saw Paul McCartney in the audience with Jane Asher, and that, I confess, seemed to me more exciting than the play itself. I don't think I have been back there for decades. The theatre itself is much more elaborate than I remember. The material is more demanding, too, judging by this year's offering of Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare's latest and least-performed plays. It is half a century since the Open Air Theatre last staged it. With a large auditorium to fill and a tradition of staging very popular works, the theatre is brave to present a fairly obscure work, and one that requires a large cast and highly intelligent handling.

The sign of a good production of any unusual drama by Shakespeare is that you come away wondering (rather than understanding) why it is so rarely performed. The director Rachel Kavanaugh and her cast pass that test cum laude.

The plot's central strand is not unlike Mozart's CosI fan tutte. Iachimo (played by Simon Day) bets Posthumus (Daniel Flynn) that in his absence he can seduce his new wife, Imogen (Emma Pallant). Shakespeare returns once more to the theme of woman's suspected inconstancy. Imogen, like Desdemona but unlike Cressida, is innocent of the charge. She suffers the agonies of her husband's murderous demand for revenge like the heroine of a tragedy, but she disguises herself as a boy like a character from one of the comedies. After many misunderstandings, all the tangles are unravelled and the piece ends happily. But the play contains too much real anguish to be classified as a comedy. Perhaps the difficulty of pigeonholing Cymbeline is one reason for its relative unpopularity.

The critic George Bernard Shaw wrote scathingly: "It is for the most part stagy trash of the lowest melodramatic order, in parts abominably written, through- out intellectually vulgar . . ." That seems unjustifiably harsh. The final scene, in which the miasma of untruth is lifted, is a beautiful piece of writing and delightfully performed in this production. The play is interesting as a study of deceit: Iachimo reports to Posthumus that he has effortlessly had his way with Imogen. Yet that is just one of many deceptions woven into the drama. The queen is slowly poisoning the king (Cymbeline). The king's sons, stolen as small children, are unaware of their own identities, having been brought up by a man living under an alias.

The moment when Iachimo emerges in Imogen's bedroom from a trunk he has had delivered to her makes you catch your breath. Is he going to rape her? As he approaches her sleeping body, he recalls Tarquin who ravished Lucrece, driving her to suicide. Shakespeare inserts a suggestive ambiguity about Imogen, who has fallen asleep reading about Philomela and turned down the page "where Philomela gave up" (raped by Tereus, who cut out her tongue to stop her reporting the crime).

As Iachimo hovers over her defenceless beauty, another image comes to mind. The chimney piece in her chamber depicts the goddess Diana who, despite being chaste, could not prevent Acteon from seeing her naked. That comes closer to Imogen's actual fate. To this production's credit, and to the audience's shame, we find the scene tensely erotic.

Pallant gives a forceful performance as Imogen. Being victimised does not make her weedy. Her speeches punch out her indignation. The Victorians turned her into a sort of chaste deity, but she seems to be a more modern species of heroine. Her first act is to defy her father by marrying Posthumus, a man of humble origins. She is a woman of the world, reading erotic literature and passing herself off as a male. Pallant's portrayal is suitably gritty.

Julian Curry plays Cymbeline in a wheelchair. His stage presence and fine diction carry off the part, which is not easy. The king has been fooled by everyone. His naive questions in the last scene are required to bring out the truth, but he must do it without entirely losing our sympathy and respect. Curry handles it masterfully.

The designer Jon Bausor gives us an elegant set, the colour of oxidised copper, which grows in beauty as the natural light fades. One of the charms of the Open Air Theatre is to experience the changing mood as night falls. The glow from the stage intensifies the sense of resolution as Imogen is vindicated.

I had never forgotten how good cornflakes taste, but I did need reminding about the Open Air, and this production has opened my eyes to Cymbeline. I wonder why it is not done more often . . .

Cymbeline is in rep until 3 September (08700 601 811)

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