THEATRE REVIEW: Cymbeline - at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until October 15, 2016.

THIS is a bag of all-sorts. Dip in and you never know quite what you’re likely to encounter.

Perhaps this could have been at the back of director Melly Still’s mind when she determined how this rarely performed Shakespearean romance should be portrayed.

There’s a great deal to chew over in this massive melting pot which provides a taste of Ancient Britain under the Roman yoke meeting up with a modern day African state and yet more gender cross-over than you can shake a staff or a sword at as appears to be the in-thing with the RSC during this year’s 400th anniversary celebration productions.

Diversity boxes well and truly ticked once again!

Still’s Cymbeline is no longer a king but a queen, and what is usually a wicked stepmother role is now her scheming second husband, The Duke.

And there’s more switching of the sexes in other main roles with one of the long lost brothers of Innogen, Cymbeline’s daughter, becoming a sister under the name of Polydore, although it is actually Guideria, and who has been raised, along with her brother, in Wales by a banished lord, Belarius, who has been living under the name of Morgan.

Confused? Well there’s no need to be as Still’s astute hand on the tiller steers a steady path and ensures continuing clarity right through to the concluding bloody battle as the Brits of old, led by Cymbeline, court success after declining to forfeit their tribute to Rome.

Thankfully Innogen remains a young woman and what a performance of many emotions we are treated to by Bethan Cullinane. Tragically separated from Posthumus, her husband, Innogen is a tortured soul but full of spirit as she sets off to find him.

Death and destruction, subterfuge and secrecy, are never far away as James Clyde’s two-faced Duke wonderfully and wilfully sets out his stall, or when Cloten, his son, played with personable dash and vigour by Marcus Griffiths, reveals his ulterior motives regarding Innogen.

Quite a few others impressed too - Gillian Bevan as a feisty Cymbeline, yet with a soft side, and Oliver Johnstone’s Iachimo - anger, angst and eventually humility.

Negatives were the Latin interludes, complete with visual interpretations, and wall maps which might have been drawn by the reception class at a local primary.

Having been informed the performance would be close on four hours long, subsequently altered to three-and-a-half hours, it was welcome to see it finally came out of the mix at five minutes over three hours. Just about right although it could conceivably have come down further.

While it might be argued there is a paucity of special effects to add colour and shade to a stark set, this is an England against Italy fixture during drab and barbaric times. But there’s quite a bit to admire with designer Anna Fleischle's revolving back-drop taking us from Britain to Rome and to Wales. However, quite what a variety of graffiti daubed on walls and doors was meant to represent was beyond comprehension.

There’s also part of a tree trunk, surely an English oak, encased in a square-shaped glass container which reveals roots and a cave, or possibly grave, when it rises from the stage floor. Possibly a metaphor for Rome’s control of British destiny and quite topical in another way, with Britain’s roots now in Europe and the Brexit ranks currently fighting to sever those ties.

Back on the battle front Cymbeline takes on the might of the Roman army but in a late ironic twist she is simply happy to win this particular fight and then opt against all-out war to settle instead for reconciliation - friendship and peace with those who control from afar.

Out of mayhem we eventually had the harmony everyone seeks.