“You’re furious, your brothel has been shut down! Shout at anyone who’ll listen!” Magdalen College School head of drama Christian Anthony is hard at work rehearsing a new production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in the school’s rehearsal studio, a freshly-painted former classroom that would be the envy of many a professional theatre company.

Brothel keeper Mistress Overdone duly converts a smile into a snarl, and delivers her lines again, this time much more viciously.

“George, push this disgusting woman back!” continues Christian as the now extremely angry Mistress advances across the floor.

Many directors have doubtless given similar instructions down the ages, but this production is making history.

Playing Mistress Overdone is Lizzie Reavley, one of the first girls to join the school’s sixth form — the arrival of about 30 girls this term ends a boys-only tradition stretching back to Magdalen College School’s foundation in 1480.

“It’s a lot of fun being here: you get to meet to new people, and explore new things,” Lizzie told me with evident enthusiasm after completing her scene.

There was much laughter from both sexes when I suggested that a period production could have involved Lizzie being strapped into corsets for her Magdalen stage debut.

Luckily, however, Christian has decided to set his production in the corset-free 1980s.

“I didn’t want the children to be put off or daunted by the thought of doing a Shakespeare play in full Elizabethan garb, and everything being very traditional and straight,” he explained.

“I wanted to set it in the 20th century so that the children found it more engaging. It also provides an extra dynamic in terms of more modern costumes, lighting, and music.

“Also, I thought the 1980s would be good because there is this big class divide in Measure for Measure: the working class characters have more dialogue and significance than in any other Shakespeare play.

“I liked the idea of them being a new romantic kind of gang, and the government being yuppie class. That seems to me to fit very well with the cultural clash within the play between the two groups of people.”

“It’s a play that falls into no category,” Christian continued. “It’s a comedy where there’s no actual love, and a tragedy where there’s no actual death.

“Productions I’ve seen play up either the comedy or the tragedy. We’ve gone quite dark in our staging and interpretation.

“For instance, there’s this wonderful bit at the end of the play when the Duke, after putting Isabella through a lot of hardship, asks to marry her. But Shakespeare doesn’t give Isabella any line of response within the text.

“That’s fantastic for a director because you can have her looking excited about that, you can have her joining the Duke. Or you can have her looking absolutely terrified at the prospect of marriage.

“We’re going to have the two of them under spotlights at the end, with this frozen look of terror — Isabella’s face after she’s been put through all this torment by various other men, now she’s forced into this marriage situation with the Duke. There’s a lot you can interpret in different ways, which is fun.”

Even though Magdalen’s Measure for Measure is set as recently as the 1980s, none of the cast members had yet been born when the decade ended.

What do the 1980s mean to you, I asked James Wilkinson, who plays Pompey, Mistress Overdone’s servant.

“It’s mainly the music. Gary Numan, Adam and the Ants, there was a lot of good stuff coming out of the 80s.”

It’s always interesting to hear what actors think of their director, especially when a pupil-teacher relationship is involved.

While Christian Anthony made a very good job of at least pretending to block his ears, Adam Smith, playing the august Provost, revealed: “He’s been patient, calm, and collected. But we’ve not yet got to the point of getting off script, so I don’t know what change that will bring about in Mr Anthony’s demeanour. I’ve heard that he’s quite a fiend for line-learning.”

Measure for Measure runs from November 18-20 at Magdalen College School, Oxford. Tickets: 01865 242191.