Outdoors, on an unkind night, a large audience fortified by picnics and umbrellas were generously rewarded by a lucid performance of Shakespeare's extravagant comedy of love.

Undeterred by steady rain a cast of six from Heartbreak Productions, doubling up with amazing dexterity, performed this complex play without a hitch.

An aristocratic marriage, four mismatched lovers, error-prone workmen and fairies of folklore are expertly interwoven by the author and were convincingly carried to the stage by the company. Each one of the six actors was outstanding.

The elegant Theseus (Tom Moody) gave it some class and the agitated lovers Helena (Abigail Gallagher) and Hermia (Gemma Kelly) brought benign mayhem. Gabrielle Meadows was as convincing an elfin Puck as she was a pompous Egeus. Richard Gee and Owen Bevan as the male lovers were vigorous and capricious, as demanded by the script, and Bevan's Bottom was played with pleasing thespian excess.

The course of true love never did run smooth and these actors made sure that the comic possibilities of this were tellingly expressed.

Lovers and the mad are closely related, as the play reminds us. Hippolyta (Abigail Gallagher) hilariously underlines this when she dotes on Bottom (hardly her type) transformed into an even more improbable ass.

But the course of comedy always, finally, runs kindly and love rights itself with the best pairings available in a flawed world.

There was nothing summery from the skies to smile on this performance but the company gave the audience a memorable helping of what nature withheld.