The Oxford Theatre Guild is back in Trinity College gardens this month with a stirring production of The Tempest. But on the first night, with the record-breaking heat wave at its height, the opening sound effects were hardly sufficient to evoke bad weather, even though the college lawns were suspiciously green. With Colin Burnie as a commanding Prospero, this production brings together some familiar faces as well as a few who are relatively new to the Oxford stage.

The set, in the Parks Road corner of the gardens, consists mainly of a tall structure, not unlike an allotment hut, which serves as a look-out for Prospero when he's spying on Miranda and Ferdinand and as a base from which Ariel works her tricks. Here the smart aristocrats from Milan are washed up, impeccable in their morning suits, the young lovers lark about, and Gonzalo and his associates have fun with their bottles of sack.

It's all somehow a bit static, although the sheer verve of the cast carries it all along at a good pace. Even Ariel, delightfully played by Rowena Lennon, is very much a confined spirit. She has no real tricks up her sleeve, and the pyrotechnics that the audience are promised are confined to a couple of fireworks in the second half.

There are some striking individual performances. Estelle Buckridge is an enchanting, and not wholly unworldly, Miranda, and Steve Wright, a professional actor from New Zealand, excels as Stephano, the ship's butler.

Director Colin Macnee has taken a few liberties with the text. The most successful is to make Trincolo the jester into Trincula, the ship's cook. Alex Reid offers us an excellent character with a down-to-earth Yorkshire accent who is more than able to take her place alongside Stephano in his drunken antics. Somewhat unnecessarily the masque scene in Act IV, described in the programme as "a rather cheesy diversion . . . . and largely irrelevant", has been taken out altogether, which spoils the fun a little. Prospero's "Our revels now are ended" speech is reinstated at the end of the play.

A couple of years ago, the Creation Theatre Company set a new and almost impossibly high standard for open-air productions of The Tempest in Oxford. Perhaps inevitably, this one is not in the same league, but it nonetheless offers an entertaining night out in a most agreeable, if at times somewhat noisy, setting.

The Tempest runs until July 29. (Box office tel. 01865 305305.