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I found myself gasping before anything happened. Entering the theater I was plunged into an all-enveloping deep, dark, mysterious, magical forest, giant trees arching upward, with leaved branches curling out over the audience, above a three-quarter thrust stage, tapestried to look like the forest floor. It was thrilling, the beauty of it.

Farr’s fusion of English legend and Shakespearean comedy is a pretty neat trick. And the set, by Gardarsson’s Reykjavik-based colleague Börkur Jónsson, is a splendid mix of outsized greenery, creaking castle architecture, Alice in Wonderland whimsy, and funhouse obstacle course complete with pond. This production adds to the Christmas-panto story and droll, athletic shenanigans an infectious score played live by Connecticut-based roots band Poor Old Shine, with lyrics by the talented musicians and Farr. What it all adds up to, if not Errol Flynn or Ivanhoe, is a magical, rough-hewn delight.

What a wonderful theatrical gift for the Holiday season.

There may never have been a more purely entertaining production at the American Repertory Theater than “The Heart of Robin Hood.”

It’s a romance, a comedy and a drama. It has swashbuckling, cross-dressing and acrobatics, a clarinet-playing mute and baddies straight out of “The Road Warrior.” There’s even an American roots band that looks like it wandered over from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” or maybe just Davis Square. By the time of its final glorious romantic tableau, it will be a rare theatergoer who’s not won over.

For someone who claims he never really liked theater, Gisli Örn Gardarsson certainly knows how to turn a rehearsal room into a fabulous playground. Actors hang upside down from high ropes, performing feats not meant for the acrophobic. The Icelandic director is here re-creating his production of “The Heart of Robin Hood” at the American Repertory Theater, and he has a mischievous glint in his eye as he talks about elves and circus tricks and his unlikely affection for a certain crashing chandelier.

Cranston gives a dazzling performance as LBJ in an action-packed new play about a seismic moment in American history

Bill Rauch graduated from Harvard University in 1984 and co-founded the Cornerstone Theater Company, which made a point of bringing theater to underserved places.

Why history? Why would a contemporary playwright turn to history as source material? Well, certainly there is a long tradition in the theater of doing so.

Brandon J. Dirden’s debut tomorrow night as Martin Luther King Jr. in the American Repertory Theater’s “All the Way” may be the biggest role of his career. And it’s one the 39-year-old stage actor almost didn’t make time for.

For award-winning director Bill Rauch ’84, returning to Harvard this summer was “emotional and wonderful.”