If you like your satire in technicolour, your actors al fresco, and your classical literature spritzed with circus dust, then get thee to the nearest stop on Moving Parts Theatre Company’s tour of Vanity Fair. This effervescent adaptation of Thackeray’s doorstop of a novel is a deliciously deft feat of storytelling, brought to life by a ridiculously multitalented ensemble who pirouette between roles with the grace of figurative, and sometimes literal tightrope walkers.

Director Simona Hughes has fashioned a whirligig of a world, leaning into Thackeray’s fairground frame with gusto. The set whispers Victorian circus while winking at modern absurdity; the music (composed by Tamara Douglas-Morris) and movement (choreographed by Nevana Stojkov) are gleeful conjurers of tone – from wistful to wry in a heartbeat.

Katrina Michaels’s Becky Sharp is all charisma and cunning as she climbs the greasy pole in society’s big-top, balancing ambition and artifice with brilliant facial and vocal control. Anna Blackburn gives a soft Amelia Sedley, weeping and magnetic. Her Foley work is delighful, and their mirrored arcs unfold with poignancy and bite.

The rest of the ensemble are a gallery of dissemblers, and Martin South is a shape-shifter supreme – now pompous, now poignant – while Tom Beattie’s boyish charm brings swagger and pathos. Andy Canadine and Keith Hill bring veteran gravitas, wild vocal shifts, and comic precision, Jahrhys Greenidge is a magnetic presence, and Joanna Nevin slips between characters with impressive poise, right until she deliberately chucks that poise away, and jumps on it for comic effect.

Behind the scenes, the design team deserves a fanfare of their own. Lily Baik and Freya Alexander conjure vibrant, transportable magic in the set and costumes, with Anna Pearhouse’s wardrobe details delighting at every reveal. Anaïs Tran Ngoc’s live violin is a show-stealer - alternately sprightly and haunting, always transporting - it gives the gravity that a well played classical instrument should, and all the levity that a painted fiddler cavorting around a walled garden can.

Touring through gardens, castles, cathedrals and colleges from Norfolk to Covent Garden, this production is a joyful reminder that theatre is meant to move – geographically and emotionally. Pack a picnic, bring a parasol, and prepare to be dazzled by the movable feast that is Moving Parts’ Vanity Fair.