SERIOUSLY, are they really going to perform in this? It was not an unreasonable question, as the thunder roared and the rain pellets bounced off the train at Knaresborough station, only 45 minutes before Thursday’s 7.30pm performance was due to start in the open air up the road at Ripley Castle.

Never mind The Taming Of The Shrew; it is the taming of this incessantly foul weather in Gulf Stream-blighted Blighty that is the more pressing problem this summer.

Yet 15 minutes later, the rain had done its worst, and producer Hester Evans-Ford and her assistant William Edwards’s recce of the sodden castle grounds had passed them fit for purpose.

Sprite Productions are in their eighth season of beating the weather in their site-specific Shakespeare summers, and so are their well-prepared audience, who button down the picnic, pull on their waterproofs and relish the abundant joys of the castle’s walled gardens, orangery, lakeside and magical woods – and one brief recourse to a tent when the earlier deluge played an encore.

What do pesky rain and soggy-bottomed trousers on fold-up seats matter when Charlotte Bennett’s cast goes at Shakespeare’s most difficult, controversial comedy with such vigour, pluck and skill. Just look at Claire Timmins’s Bianca, tied by spiteful sister Kate’s line of rope to a water-spouting fountain in nothing more than a Forties’ swimsuit. Now that’s what I call commitment to the cause.

The cause here is telling Shakespeare’s awkward, cruel drama at a time of significant change for women; in 1947, in the embers of the Second World War, with a Morgan motorbike for Petrucchio (not risked on Thursday); a Forties wireless in the garden, lampshades in the woods and dapper waistcoats and flying-ace moustaches for the men, plus a Forties’ movie diva wardrobe and vintage microphone for the singing Bianca.

Becci Gemmell’s Kate the Cursed is in land girl attire and while she is still the screaming cat-fighter, Bennett makes her “shrew” more positive, and she is most certainly the equal of Richard Corgan’s part-Richard Burton, part Rhod Gilbert Petruccho with his taming sleep-deprivation tactics.

Sam Wilkin’s Tranio is the pick of the support players, the essence of a Forties playing card with a light comic touch and dapper looks, while Jon Edgley Bond, from the Fitzrovia Radio Hour, brings a Rhys Ifans rakish manner to Grumio, with the added bonus of his impromptu ditties.

Sprite I, Rain 0, again.

The Taming Of The Shrew, Sprite Productions, Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, until July 8. Box office: 01423 770632.