Some readers of The Oxford Times are likely to be wondering why there is no review today of Shared Experience’s high-profile production of Mary Shelley, which opened this week at Oxford Playhouse. The reason for this is simple, if a little surprising: Tuesday’s opening night audience saw only half the play, and by the time it was staged in full the next evening the newspaper had already gone to press.

I might have felt inclined to review the part of the play we did see on Tuesday — actually, two of the three acts — had this be staged in the conventional way. In fact, William Chubb, the actor playing one of the principal characters, Mary’s father William Godwin, was unable to appear owing to a sudden family bereavement. At a few hours’ notice, Jonathan Oliver, an actor with close links to the theatre, agreed very sportingly to take on the role. He proved astonishingly successful at portraying the political philosopher, the play script in his hand looking not inappropriate in the bookish atmosphere of the Godwin home.

Come the interval, however, it emerged that further trouble was in store. After a delayed start of some 20 minutes, there came an announcement from the stage that Flora Nicholson, who was playing Mary’s sister Fanny, had been taken ill with heat exhaustion, and that the performance would have to be abandoned. She is now fully recovered.

The vast majority of Tuesday’s near- capacity audience have accepted the theatre’s offer of seats later in the week. I shall certainly be returning, too, to fulfil my reviewing obligations. What I have already seen convinces me that this is more first-class work from the hugely talented playwright Helen Edmundson who already this year has enriched my life with her version of Swallows and Amazons and the RSC’s The Heresy of Love at Stratford.