★★★★★

Children wrestling with Shakespeare could be given a carrot.

Hang in there, get the characters, the plots and the context and you’ll be able to laugh your socks off at parodies by Cole Porter, Tom Lehrer, Victoria Wood, the Goodies and the Cambridge Footlights to name but a few.

Christopher Luscombe and Malcolm McKee’s Shakespeare Revue had a blast with some of the more hilarious material inspired by the Bard, well served by actor-singers Lizzie Bea, Clive Hayward, Nicola Keen and Alex Morgan.

The rapid-fire revue contained more references than most Shakespeare scholars could reel off – and some that our Will never envisaged. It took a minute or so to unpick the introduction to Arhacti het Dirth.

The wonderful cast, singing like opera stars and dancing like Fred Astaire, gave the audience a chance to sing along which made us realise how difficult it is to look easy. A brilliant show of forgotten entertainment – that’s the short review of the revue.