"The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)". Pilch

Too many cooks, in the words of the great Arthur Smith, make shows on BBC2. Is there too much Shakespeare in Oxford?

Since I started writing reviews just over two years ago, I've seen sixteen Shakespeare plays, and that represents considerably less than half the bard-based productions that go on in gardens, parks and castles around the town. Truly, he doth bestride the Radcliffe Camera like a colossus.

As if to recognise this dramatic dominance, Chris Goodwin, Ali Khan and Tom Pavey, coralled like cats by directors Tom Freeman and Felix Westcott, have rebirthed the great post-Shakespeare improvalike comedy extravaganza that was, and is, The Complete Works (Abridged).

Appropriately enough, this show began life as an idea dreamt up by some students in the 1980s. They quickly formed a company called the RSC (Reduced Shakespeare Company) and their creation ran for years in the West End. They followed it up with lots of sequels, abridging everything from the story of Hollywood to Wagner's Ring cycle. It was part of a wave of post-modern theatrical hilarity, along with the National Theatre of Brent (who condensed the Bible into a two-man routine more absurd than anything Samuel Beckett managed) and Mischief Theatre, who devised the Play That Goes Wrong franchise.

The story behind this production is that one of the original RSC members met the team from Oxford and gave them his blessing to take on the mantle, and re-abridge Shakespeare for a new generation.

And that's exactly what happens.

References have been updated to namecheck social media, Bake-Off and other icons of 21st-century life. But the basic premise, of a local am-dram company with ideas above its station, remains intact.

What results is a breakneck farce in which the infighting between the actors boils over into the Shakespearean scenes they mangle with such innocent carnage. There's plenty of audience involvement, some great visual gags (I particularly liked the ghost of Hamlet's father as a pathetic scrap of paper lowered from the ceiling with a smiley face drawn on it), and some hilariously random attempts at meaningful interpretation, such as Pavey (who plays all the female characters) constantly vomiting on members of the audience for no discernible reason.

For me, however, there's an aspect of this show that feels unbalanced (and it's in the original version, no fault of this production): it's glaringly obvious that it started out as twenty-minute versions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and then all the other plays have been shoved into a ten-minute summary. You can see how that made sense for a company trying to turn their two mini-tragedies into a full-length concept show. But it's strangely unsatisfying to see such a gigantic disparity. By contrast, Spymonkey Theatre's mind-blowing anthology The Complete Deaths from 2016 gave each of the 75 onstage deaths in Shakespeare almost equal weight, and still managed to eke out a backstage story that connected them all.

This is a structural feature of the script, and our hardy, hard-working team aren't responsible for that - indeed, others may see it as a virtue.

The Complete Works (Abridged) is undoubtedly funny, and it's a great way to end the term and head into the Christmas holidays. But I think, with this talented team, it could be even funnier.

In the decades since this was first devised, improvised comedy has become ever more widespread and popular. (In fact there are at least four improv companies at work in Oxford alone.) But the Reduced Shakespeare Company's approach to improv is tentative. Everything is scripted, even the bits that look extemporised, and there are just occasional moments of unpredictability involving audience members.

If this new group of actors (who overflow with comic talent) were to introduce a bit more genuine improvisation to the proceedings, I feel sure it would deliver huge dividends. They're using their real names on stage, so maybe they should try being their real selves. Audiences know when something unpredictable is going on, and they love it. Equally, these days, they know when something is a bit fake, and they're proportionately cautious.

Hamlet's advice to the players regarding comedy was

Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. 

But Hamlet was more into tragedy than comedy, and times have changed.

I hope this production gets more than the two performances it's slated for this week. It feels like the start of something with massive potential. And for a country in thrall to the genius of Shakespeare, a show that sticks two fingers up at him is more than welcome.