PAUL STAMMERS enjoy's Creation's Spanish-tinged Much Ado About Nothing

You can tell there's a fuel crisis. No Mini Coopers or Vespa scooters for Creation Theatre Company this time - the only forms of transport are a bicycle and a wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow is employed to good effect in what may be one of Shakespeare's sweetest works, but also one of the less artistically challenging: it's a familiar tale of mismatched couples, disguised identities (compounded by Creation's small cast doubling up, no more so than the prolific Kevin Murphy, who plays four characters), and love covering up a multitude of sins.

Don Pedro, his illegimate half-brother Don John and companions Claudio and Benedick return from battle to greet governor Leonato, his daughter Hero and her cousin Beatrice. Claudio immediately falls for the svelte Hero, appalling Benedick, who champions the bachelor life.

Although Benedick and Beatrice enjoy trading insults, it is not long before the two find themselves attracted - with a little help from their friends.

Which is where the wheelbarrow comes in. No matter that the somewhat gangly figure of Benedick (Nicholas Osmond) is barely covered by the sack under which he dives to take cover in the barrow, nor that it is scarcely credible that he could believe the prattle his colleagues Claudio (Tom Golding) and Don Pedro (Guy Burgess) have concocted to lure him into courtship with the fiery Beatrice (here played winningly by Lizzie Hopley - although next month she is to be replaced by Amy Stacy).

Belief is suspended the moment the cast stride into the courtyard in suits and shades (did director Charlotte Conquest dust off a copy of Reservoir Dogs?) to a typically eclectic soundtrack, rippling with soft Latin beats.

The original comedy is supposedly set in Sicily, but Conquest cheerfully admits her decision to locate the drama in Spain is partly to introduce "some fiery flamenco dancing". The posturing with roses clenched between teeth and the wailing gypsy strains of Andalusian cante jondo song are appropriately passionate, but the strength of this production lies in its competent daftness - Benedick caressing his cheek with a banana skin flung by Beatrice; the pompous bluster of constable Dogberry (Gordon Cooper); the squawk of the stylus being yanked from a record player.

The frenetic scampering about is offset, sensibly, by the measured pace of Gregory Cox as Leonato, Olivia Mace as Hero, Gordon Cooper as Don John, and Caroline Devlin as the servant Margaret.

On Wednesday night, the wind occasionally caused some of the cast's words to be lost. But while the rain in Spain may indeed have fallen on The Plain, at Oxford Castle the audience suffered only the occasional light drizzle.