Creation Theatre Company is back in the outdoor amphitheatre at the Said Business School — a stunning setting that is itself a star of any production it hosts — with a fast-paced and lucid account of Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. The headlong progress of the drama, hard as this can sometimes be to follow, advances intelligibly under Helen Tennison’s careful direction, with the play’s lovely poetry there to delight anew as interpreted by the eight-strong cast.

Co-designers Neil Irish and Sarah Bacon have supplied a circle of classical columns, in various stages of decay, wherein the wide-ranging action is contained. There are fewer than usual forays into the long, tree-lined courtyard below and beyond the stage, though Richard Kidd’s hapless messenger (he is also a beautifully spoken Enobarbus) is chased there after bringing Cleopatra the maddening news of Antony’s marriage to Caesar’s sister Octavia (Raewyn Lippert).

This tactical union has been devised to re-establish rapport between Rome’s ruling triumvirate of Caesar (Dominic Brewer, also — in very different style — Cleo’s eunuch attendant Mardian), Lepidus (James Hayward) and Antony. This has been damaged by the last’s defection from Rome to dally in Egypt with its alluring Queen to the fury of his officers who call him “a strumpet’s fool”.

But, of course, the dangerous fascination between this most famous pair of lovers persists, spelling ultimate doom for both. That this is a love affair between two people of considerable maturity is shown in the casting of Tom Peters and Lizzie Hopley — he suggesting something of the dignity and martial genius of the “old ruffian”, she much of the sexual allure and studied artifice of one of history’s greatest actresses.

Until September 3. 01865 766266 (www.creationtheatre.co.uk).