COMMON Ground Theatre Ensemble, a new touring company rooted at the University of York, is making its debut with a touring production of Shakespeare’s magical/mysterious/problem play “as you’ve never seen it before”.

The name Common Ground has two implications. Firstly, the company is taking theatre beyond theatres into village halls, pubs and Poppleton’s Tithe Barn for last Saturday’s debut performance.

Secondly, co-directors Tom Cornford and playwright Hannah Davies are seeking a shared meeting place for Shakespeare’s text, on the 450th anniversary of his birth, and a modern audience.

In layman’s terms, Cornford and Davies re-imagine Shakespeare’s tale of cruelty, separation, love and forgiveness for a quartet of vivacious actor-musician performers, who sometimes speak Shakespeare’s words and other times go off-Bard to speak their own, as devised in rehearsal.

All done and dusted in ten minutes shy of two hours, including an interval of impromptu jukebox hits sung to guitar accompaniment by cast members Jonny Neaves (a singer-songwriter in his other stage life) and Sarah Louise Davies, the show’s composer of boisterous songs fit for a pub singalong.

“It’s flowery stuff, this,” says Rebecca Beattie, in a no-nonsense Yorkshire accent. “I’ll translate while you get your ear in.”

No-one would suggest every Shakespeare production should be given such a Shake-up but your reviewer heard only one voice of dissension, whose quibble was over her struggle to recognise the story in its new form.

That form involves the all-seeing character, Autolycus, being turned into The Autolycuns, a four-piece band of players, singers, tricksters and rogues (Mark Edwards, Davies, Neaves and Beattie) for “a tale of teeth-grinding spite, sweet soul revival and sheep grazing in green fields”.

Contrary to the dissenting voice, I found the story, split between tyrannical Sicilia in the first half and laissez-faire Bohemia in the second, to be clear and sharp. A little darkness is sacrificed in Mark Edwards’s portrayal of the jealous Leontes, who is so appallingly behaved in his cruel, false accusation of his pregnant wife Hermione’s infidelity, but the blossoming love of his abandoned daughter Perdita (Beattie) and the prince (Neaves) is utterly joyful in the land of the sheep-shearers.

Placing Hermione (Davies) in statue form on a stepladder is the ultimate image of this “people’s theatre” version of A Winter’s Tale. This is a brand of high-energy performance that would equally suit the street, especially because of its music, and while it is as irreverent as Buxton company Oddsocks’s Shakespeare send-ups in pursuit of high-octane comedy, there is original, provocative thinking at work too.

In their programme notes, Cornford and Davies talk of making “noisy changes” to the text that address “the most urgent questions” of our society. The play enacts “the paranoid imagination of patriarchy” and obsessive efforts (by Leontes) to control women’s bodies and lives, all told from a male perspective. “We couldn’t be doing with this,” they say, changing the Old Shepherd to a Shepherdess and sharing out the roles between two men and two women.

Are they taking liberties in righting the wrongs of the play for the 21st century, or should the peaceful reconciliation of Shakespeare’s finale be enough? I would argue that judgement on a play’s morals is best left to the pub discussion afterwards, whether it be Leontes’s paranoid behaviour or anti-Semitism in The Merchant Of Venice. The tenor of those discussions would change through the years.

A Winter’s Tale, Common Ground Theatre Ensemble, Fauconberg Arms, Coxwold, tomorrow night and on tour until April 4. Box office: commongroundtouringtheatre.co.uk