If you’re looking to evoke the sun-drenched terraces of Messina, there are few better places to do it than Oxford Castle. Settling in for Wild Goose Theatre’s Much Ado About Nothing in the balmy 30 degree heat, watching the action unfold as the light bleaches the stone and then fades into gauzy pink sunset, boozy, bright and bohemian Sicily is conjured with the greatest of ease.

There’s much praise that I can (and will) heap on Paul Alex Nicholl’s production, but what’s especially present throughout is how well this Much Ado incorporates its open-air setting into the antics; not only in its stately backdrop, but in how dynamically each scene fills the space. Audience members are roped into acts of subterfuge, slickly choreographed dance sequences add visual appeal while still letting the dialogue sparkle, and the various trickeries afoot to tie the obstinate Benedick and Beatrice to one another are accompanied by some truly laugh-out-loud sight gags. And as the light dims and the stage lamps come on, the move to a spotlight gives the play’s most moving sequences the gravity they deserve. This is set to a cheekily unfaithful 1940s soundtrack - you may get Glen Miller, but the instrumental for ‘Rock DJ’ won’t be too far behind (look, if you can suspend your disbelief for Bridgerton, you can suspend it for this).

I’ve said this before when reviewing past Much Ado adaptations, but what makes it my favourite Shakespeare comedy is how very grounded its twists and turns are; no supernatural interventions or ill-fated shipwrecks, just a masked ball and a few too many drinks to tempt the folly and the fraud of men. With so many moving parts to this plot - the courtship of young Claudio and Hero, the ‘merry war’ betwixt Benedick and Beatrice, and the evil Don John’s machinations to impugn Hero’s honour before her wedding day - a good Much Ado lives and dies by the chemistry of its cast, and here, it’s a chain reaction.

Don Pedro’s (Benji Lamb’s) coterie are a delight to watch whenever they’re onstage, swaggering about in aviator jackets and shades like Top Gun for the Churchill Era. You might think this broey machismo would wear thin after a while, but their bravado is pricked often enough for them to stay likeable. The decision to cast Don Pedro a little younger does a great job of conveying the ‘boys club’ dynamic; the trio of Lamb, Oscar Luckett’s Claudio and Billy Morton’s Benedick in particular play so well off one another in this respect, setting us up for devastating contrast in the play’s second act.

As for Morton himself, this may be my favourite Benedick yet. I’ve seen Morton perform before with the Oxford Imps, and you can see those skills come to the forefront here. Morton reads the room with incredible perspicacity - he riffs, he mugs, he brings the audience into the fold, and by play’s end we’re eating out of the palm of his hand. His gift for physical comedy is unmatched - his attempt to ‘hide’ behind a convenient shrub will have you in stitches - but when sincerity is called for, he delivers in spades, knowing that Benedick’s jokester persona conceals at its core a thoroughly upstanding man.

And while not getting quite as many opportunities for gags, Rachael Twyford’s Beatrice can more than hold her own against him - she brings a touch more acid, but is equally unafraid to embrace the silly, particularly in her own entrapment by Hero and Margaret. She is at her strongest when she lets her mask of disdain slip, and the vulnerability peek through; her abrupt refusal of Don Pedro’s offer of marriage and subsequent verbal hole-digging was one of the night’s best line deliveries and a genuinely refreshing approach to that dialogue I’d never seen before.

Ask me to find any weak link in the bunch and I’d be hard-pressed. Craig Finlay’s Leonato runs the gamut from doting guardian to gleeful prankster to fire-and-brimstone rage seamlessly; Oscar Luckett’s Claudio and Gretel Kahn’s Hero are adorably and believably timid in their courtship, and watching the collapse of their abortive wedding is truly gut wrenching; and Mark Fiddaman’s twitchy, furtive powderkeg of a Don John pairs brilliantly with Jordan Bische’s wheeler-dealer Borachio. In the hands of this cast, Shakespeare’s words don’t just flow; they dance.

Of course I should mention that, by the time you book tickets, our players will have done a switcheroo - Wild Goose has a rotating roster this month, so the cast as I saw it will return in the third week of the show’s run. That’s not to say they won’t be there altogether though; you can catch Morton, Twyford and Finlay as Don Pedro, Hero and Dogberry respectively. But if the direction is anything to go by, I’m sure the next group of players will be handling their text with the same camaraderie, pathos and ineffable sense of fun I saw on display. I guess you’ll have to see it more than once to get the whole picture…