This was the sort of evening Oxford’s outdoor Shakespeare producers dream of – fine and warm. So Creation Theatre Company’s Twelfth Night was played under a clear blue sky in the Saïd’s rooftop amphitheatre, with no need to dive into the alternative indoor Nelson Mandela lecture theatre.

It’s some four weeks since Christopher Gray first reviewed the production here. It has settled down well, with excellent pacing, and vivid interaction between the characters.

And characterisation is a particular challenge: as there are just eight actors, nearly everyone plays at least two roles. Andrew Macbean, for instance, combines a rough and ready, Welsh-accented Antonio with a dry, pedantic Malvolio, whose speech is so affected that you suspect he has taken elocution lessons to cover up a humble background. Macbean also negotiates some tricky costume changes – the moment when he transforms from Antonio into a particularly ridiculous, cross-gartered Malvolio is a masterpiece of contortionism.

But the toffiest voice quite properly belongs to Stephen Carlile’s Sir Andrew Aguecheek: “I’m a gweat heater of beef,” says he. His relationship with Nick Earnshaw’s roly-poly Sir Toby works excellently. Melanie MacHugh presents a hyper, cheerful Olivia, appalled when she discovers that her name has been falsely used by a vicious Maria (Janet Greaves). Well-pointed characterisations come, too, from Antony Jardine as a gentle Feste (pictured), and Emily Pennant-Rea as Viola.

Director Heather Davies places the action on a beach, with her eight mariners coming ashore after shipwreck, and the whole production radiates a timeless, rough-hewn atmosphere (designer Tomasin Cuthbert). But above all Davies remembers that Twelfth Night isn’t simply a comedy. As actor Andrew Macbean described it to me during rehearsals: “The characters are so complex, and multi-layered. But that makes it very, very exhilarating to act – the fact that it’s a comedy, yet it’s as bleak and dark as the deepest dungeon.”

Until September 5. Tickets: 01865 766266 (www.creationtheatre.co.uk).