• GILES WOODFORDE talks to the cast of Much Ado About Nothing as they prepare for a very special performance

In June 1895, it’s believed, the Oxford University Dramatic Society presented its first open-air production.

The show? Alice in Wonderland, staged in Worcester College gardens exactly 30 years after Lewis Carroll ’s book was published. Incidentally, the first edition of the book had been printed just down the road at Oxford University Press, but it was withdrawn on quality grounds. OUDS’s Alice wasn’t without its problems either – according to Humphrey Carpenter’s history of the society, the Vice Chancellor hadn’t given permission for the production to take place, so no money could be taken.

How things have changed. This summer OUDS follows the Globe into the Bodleian Library’s hallowed Old Schools Quad for the first time with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

“I hope the production will look visually spectacular in the Quad, and that it will also be affecting and touching that Oxford University students are performing there,” says director Max Gill. “It’s really exciting, and an absolute privilege that the authorities have allowed us to do it.”

Max has set his production in Shakespeare’s original Messina, Sicily – but updated to 1958. The Mafia is much in evidence, and a video trailer for the production features not only elegant and fashionably dressed ladies, but also a man being roughed up in a cellar.

“I found the 1950s particularly interesting because people nowadays glamorise a world that actually is quite different from the reality,” Max said. “Everybody loves 1950s cinema, clothes, music, but I don’t think most people would actually want to live in the 1950s. It’s the same with the Mafia: people make excuses for it, but actually it’s a downright unpleasant organisation. The use of an image to glamorise people fits nicely with many of the themes of the play.”

Much Ado’s Beatrice and Benedick have sometimes been described as: “Quarrelling all the way to the altar”.

“Shakespeare makes it clear that there’s been a bit of a frisson between them in the past,” agrees Ruby Thomas, playing Beatrice. “There’s a chemistry between them the whole way through – it’s less like quarrelling, more like battling with strong wills.”

“I think what we’ve also found is that Beatrice and Benedick are actually just a couple of sad old virgins,” adds Jordan Waller, playing Benedick. “Speak for yourself!” interrupts Ruby forcefully, as Jordan continues: “ I’ve more and more discovered that they’re using their wits – in this whole quarrel of wits – to mask the fact that they’re downright sterile when it comes to the bedroom.”

Leonato, Governor of Messina, is played by William Hatcher, who has just graduated from Oxford Brookes – reflecting the fact that OUDS nowadays welcomes members from both Oxford universities.

“I think Leonato is as bent as the next Mafioso,” William tells me. “He suffers greatly from misinformation put about by a few of the other characters. His fallibility is brought to the fore, but so his mercy.”