An artistic challenge of some dimension was created by a talented group of Oxford University actors with their production of a new play, The Changing of the Guard.

That it succeeded so well owed much to the skill of the professional director Iqbal Khan, whose previous productions have included Much Ado About Nothing and Othello for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The work of first-time playwright Shomit Dutta, The Changing of the Guard shows us characters familiar from classical texts in a new way. Principally, it focuses on a meeting between Helen of Troy and Odysseus, to which a passing reference is made in Homer.

Here, the much-travelled Greek king (played by Dominic Applewhite) smuggles himself into the apartment of the captive Helen (Mary Higgins) disguised as one of her serving maids. This occurs under the noses of the Trojan guards whose comic interactions are another theme, an especially amusing contribution made by Yash Saraf’s Sergeant Cobb.

With the Helen/Odysseus action confined to her bedroom, and she being famously the most beautiful woman in the world, it might be supposed that things get a little – er, heated. And indeed they do after she appears in provocative undress and he strips off for a bath. But a sleeping draught is required for Helen to have her wicked way.

Her tendresse for her maids (Grainne O’Mahoney and Isobel Jasper Jones) also features in the sex-laden drama whose performers – to their credit – showed a forthright lack of embarrassment.

With the action split between bedroom, maids’ ante-room and guard room on three sections of the stage, occasional overlaps were sometimes a bit confusing.

4/5