THE Handlebards, a troupe of professional actors who cycle around the country and perform in the open air their own highly entertaining brand of Shakespeare, made a welcome return to Bude last Sunday evening.

They performed ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ on the lawn in front of beautiful Ebbingford Manor which, with construction of walls on three sides of the lawn since last year, has become a delightful venue for outdoor theatre, writes Christine Williams.

The audience came dressed for the weather and had brought along their own seats or blankets to sit on and some of them had brought picnics.

Shakespeare’s famous comedy is a riotous and colourful celebration of wit, intrigue and reluctant love and relates the tale of a group of soldiers who return from war to a household in Messina and kindle new love interests as well as re-kindling old rivalries and the consequent parallel love stories of Beatrice, Benedick, Claudio and Hero become entangled with plotting and frivolity.

With their rapid costume and character changes, many of them on set, the all-male troupe of four played twenty roles and there were moments when a single actor was on stage playing two or three roles. So that the audience knew who was who the characters often had their initials on their costumes — BE for Benedick, CL for Claudio, etc.

When there was a need for more than four actors a puppet was used and sometimes members of the audience were recruited. With occasional musical interludes and generous doses of chaos the riotous story moved apace and of course produced a great deal of laughter. With either the sun or the moon on display to denote day or night the action took place in front of a flimsy set which was accidentally knocked over at one moment.

The warm applause which greeted the actors as they took their final bows showed how much the audience had appreciated this tongue-in-cheek, hilarious version of Shakespeare. They will no doubt, be already looking forward to July 5 when Quantum Theatre will perform ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ also at Ebbingford Manor.

The event offered an opportunity to publicise Connect Bude and a raffle raised funds for the campaign to improve the town’s connectivity.