Sir – I have never seen a production at Stratford that disappointed me more than The Heart of Robin Hood. Joan Littlewood would have been as horrified as were we all.

From the website it is clear that children were delighted with the clever special effects. But I fear they will have gone home assuming that Derek Farr’s dubious version of the plot was historic. They won’t have noticed the trite dialogue, the unpleasant messages carried by the action and the crudities.

Why should children be given the impression that Robin Hood and his merry men were a band of yobs and muggers with no interest at all in helping the poor?

And if so, why should we be pleased that the good Maid Marion flies off with him into the branches? Why was Friar Tuck beheaded and his head carried across the stage on a spear? Why should we watch a peasant hanging throughout a whole scene, swinging from a noose? Someone had his tongue ripped out, and not only that, but the bloody tongue was waved about for us all to see.

And shouldn’t we all have learnt by now not to make fun of other people’s religions for heaven’s sakes? Crucifixes thrown in the duckpond, confession to someone in a cardinal’s hat treated as a funny joke? A bloodstained crusader returning from the wars using bad language. Is this what Stratford has come to?

Perhaps I missed a review in your paper that might have warned me not to waste money on buying tickets for it. I shall certainly hestitate before buying tickets for a production by Gisli Oru Gardarsson again.

Margaret Bullard, Oxford