As a setting for Shakespeare it would be hard to beat the café balcony of the historic Pah Homestead. The action flows around quirky sculptures from the Wallace Collection while the sound of chirping cicadas blends with random bird calls and the softly modulating light of the western sky provides a spectacularly dramatic backdrop.
The excerpts are loosely connected under the theme of rebellion, though if you were to raise the question posed in The Wild One - "Hey Johnny what are you rebelling against?" - the answer would echo Brando's laconic "Whadda you got ?"
Snippets from Macbeth and Coriolanus are primarily concerned with the mechanics of conspiracy, while the revelation scene from The Merchant of Venice, with Portia and Nerissa mercilessly pranking their husbands, has more to do with revel than rebel.
A comic highlight comes an exuberant mix of horseplay and swordplay from Henry IV Part One that sees Simon Prast in fine form as a brazenly dissembling Falstaff.
In a similar vein the bewildering riot of mistaken identities in Twelfth Night is given an additional layer of complication when cross-gender role playing collides with cross-gender casting.