The play takes place in Blackwell’s wonderful Norrington Room . . . it’s a lovely space to enjoy a play, surrounded by such a wealth of knowledge and literature. Creation Theatre channels the bookish vibe by using books as some of their very minimal props and to create clever sound effects. The costume design is outstanding, taking the drama outside of a particular time or place and allowing the personal aspect of Shakespeare’s play to take precedence over a more political setting.

Ayckbourn has become the biographer of the sexual peccadilloes and day-to-day emotional strain of middle England; it’s quirks and storms-in-teacups. In this collection of five short one-act plays, having tucked a string of successes under his belt he seems to be flexing his newly found dramatic muscles in a kind of, ‘Look what I can do’, display. In Mother Figure, a housebound mum, whose husband is permanently on the road and so has no one but the kids to talk to, has her brain reduced to milk-soaked wads.

Mark Bruce’s vision of this cultural foundation stone is dark, violent and sexy. The story of Odysseus’s return from Troy starts with his leave-taking from Penelope and their newborn son, Telemachus (Wayne Parsons) who we meet again, twenty years later, as an adult. Mr.Bruce has developed a style that incorporates dance and a kind of dumb show. But here is no series of melodramatic tableaux; rather flights of gymnastic abandon and vigorous purpose . . .