Finding new ways to give Shakespeare a contemporary face (Although as Ben Jonson writes, “he is not of an age but for all time”) is something of a perennial challenge for directors.  The circus that surrounds a modern top-flight football team certainly has a whiff of the ruling courts of the city-states of old. Director, Michael Longhurst, without too much arm twisting of Shakespeare puts wealth, footballing skill and fame in the place of position in a hierarchical society. Perhaps more convincingly for this production, wagging tongues at court and the looming shame of dishonour are replaced by the live-or-die censure of social media. It’s a world in which shame is replaced by the urge to litigate. It’s a convincing cocktail.

Hypocrisy and misogyny are thrown into sharper relief in a milieu in which women, more so than in Shakespeare’s court of Messina, are seen as objects and trophies. Leonato (here the owner of Messina FC) happily receives oral sex from his PR, Margaret, who appears to be free and easy with her favours, only to bluster later about the honour of his daughter, Hero.

The director with his designer, Jon Bausor, paint a convincing picture of laddish behaviour in the dressing-room and the constant partying and general excess, which matches the public perception of ‘overpaid young men’, when not actually playing or training. The overall feel of the production is, TOWIE or perhaps, Corrie does Shakespeare. It’s a clever conceit. However it’s a setting that to some extent boxes him in as it isn’t one in which verse feels at home. As a consequence the sharp exchanges between Beatrice and Benedick seem a little self-conscious and laboured.

Let me say that Freema Agyeman makes it work for her. As a post, ‘MeToo’ woman, a sports journalist, her Beatrice gives no ground until she is smitten, and even then has no intention to simper submissively. On the other hand Nick Blood’s cynical scallywag of a Benedict is no poetry reading romantic, but meets his love on equal terms. However for me the scene that lingers in the memory is when the youthfully eager Claudio (Daniel Adeosun) proposed to the doll-like Hero (Eleanor Worthington-Cox). As if she had just won the lottery she quivered in speechless excitement at being the one chosen by a football superstar. It was a funny and touching moment.

The production is full of invention, but that comes ultimately at the price of any finesse.