“We have never seen Shakespeare done like this anywhere, ever,” Creation’s Lucy Askew, says proudly, while wiping the sweat off her brow.

As Chief Executive and Producer it’s her job to ensure Creation continually surpasses itself, but this year, despite its ambitious and often kookie productions, Oxford’s favourite Shakespeare company has surpassed itself, bringing us Midsummer Night’s Dream in the round, round the city that is.

To give you an idea what to expect, the audience is split up into secret enclaves, each sector being sent to a classified location, Midsummer Night’s Dream then being played out before them, bit by bit, around central Oxford.

“The first test drive went really well,” Lucy says with relief. “There was a real buzz about it and the audience thought it was such fun - a bit like being in The Crystal Maze. So we are nervous and excited all at the same time.”

Led via a series of clues onto the next location where a fairies, lovers and Athenians await them, before culminating in a performance in a secret Oxford garden by The Mechanicals.

It sounds like a logistical nightmare? “Organisationally it has been the most complicated thing we have ever attempted. But while it’s been enormously challenging it works, so we are really delighted,” Lucy grins. "And all the actors have to be good improvisers in case anything goes wrong, and think fast on their feet.

"But at the same time, they are all really excited to be in something so novel and groundbreaking and really up for it. They know that if its by directer Zoe Seaton’s it will be ambitious and absolutely brilliant."

Do all these *** detract from the text at all? "It doesn’t take anything away from Shakespeare’s text by being is different . It’s just Creation’s way of portraying Midsummer Night’s Dream through a treasure-hunt style exploration of Oxford.

If anything it makes it more intimate because there are 10 of you listening to the lines right in front of you, physically and mentally involved and committed, rather than sat in a huge audience miles away from the stage."

But where does Creation’s continually driving force come from and this need to continually reinvent itself? Does it set out to be subversive? "It doesn’t feel like a choice," Lucy explains, "because the shows take on a life of their own very quickly and become the very thing they were always going to be.

Following up MND with Hamlet later this summer, an entirely separate cast are also busy rehearsing, the two shows running concurrently for a few weeks.

Equally off-the-wall, the Danish cast will come tumbling out of the back of a van in University Parks. “They rock up, pile out and knock out a Hamlet,” Lucy laughs.

“And yes, there will be a period when the two shows overlap, but they are so different, Hamlet being hilariously funny and sad, so they are totally contrasting shows. All we need now is for people to come and see them."