A colleague's success is a double-edged sword. Following Rupert Goold's astonishing Macbeth, which opened last month, director Philip Franks has inherited the same Patrick Stewart-led ensemble of actors to arrange in a comedy. This new production isn't scintillating like Macbeth but it is certainly very fine.

Before we can appreciate the detailed emotional lives that Franks has intelligently gifted each of his characters, there is Leslie Travers's exquisite set. A back wall of curlicued wrought iron and glass, like part of some long-lost winter gardens, looms imposingly, while off to the side is a patch of storm-brushed wasteland. Intriguing objects - a gramophone, a model ship - dangle from the ceiling. How beautifully this encapsulates the elegant, elegiac 1919 setting, perfect for a play obsessed with bygone idylls.

If a couple of scenes, including the denouement, tend to the static, it somehow fits the sense of a world that has recently seen enough action to last a lifetime.

It seems right for a piece with some of the oddest "happy" endings in Shakespeare that the comic element is dampened. "The lighter people" gain weight; finally we can believe Sir Andrew Aguecheek (poignant Scott Handy) when he says: "I was adored once, too." Stewart's superbly condescending Scottish-accented Malvolio moves from morning suit and frown into kilt, yellow stockings and rictus grin.

Laura Rees as Viola upsets the balance of nuance by starting far too perkily for one supposedly subsumed by grief, a stance that is never fully righted. Elsewhere, Michael Feast's omnipresent jester Feste is eerily Archie Rice behind the eyes and there is, initially, a suggestion of the magnetic, brittle beauty of Kristin Scott Thomas to Kate Fleetwood's grieving Olivia. But how gloriously and giddily Olivia then responds to the wooing of Cesario, as if emerging from mourning into a tipsy world of romantic possibilities. Her black dress is replaced by cream, as wintry hearts tip cautiously towards spring.

• In rep until 31 August. Information: 01243 781312; www.cft.org.uk