The Heywood Society’s production of King Lear, directed by Sam Fulton, was advertised as “oppressively agoraphobic.” I made it down to Peterhouse on Friday to see whether it would, in fact, “claw” my nerves “to shreds.”

The outdoor staging did indeed offer a kind of Halloween vibe. Attendees mingled outside the Peterhouse chapel before being led to the Deer Park, walking past costume-clad Petreans at hall. Creatively, the first two rows of seating were outfitted with cushions and blankets rather than chairs, adding to the slightly mad picnic aesthetic of the evening.

Being a bit of a philistine, I hadn’t seen or read King Lear before turning up at Peterhouse, so here’s the short version if you’re in the same boat: Lear (Tim Atkin), plans on divvying up his kingdom between his three daughters: flattering, disingenuous Regan (Elise Hagan) and Goneril (Alice Carlill), who are transparently done with their dad’s shit, along with the very honest, very serious Cordelia (Daisy Jones). Asked why she deserves her share, Cordelia makes a plea for honesty over the art flattery, and Lear cuts her out of the deal. Meanwhile, Edmund, played by Isobel Laidler thanks to some inspired gender-blind casting, the bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester (Seth Kruger), is scheming to win his father’s title from his legitimate half-brother, Edgar (Louis Norris). Jones’ doubling, as Lear’s jester and confidant, rounds out the major dramatis personae.

As the play opened, I worried Atkin’s Lear would be stentorian, sonorous but one-note, but as Lear journeys deeper into madness, Atkin’s performance becomes masterfully pallid, sick and needy. Particularly before the intermission, I was struck by the way the play resolved into a drama of old age’s “second childhood.” While Goneril in particular at first strikes one as ungrateful, over time we can see her frustration with an ageing parent passing into “dotage” and refusing to admit it.

Conversely, Laidler’s louche, mercurial Edmund uses the insinuation that Edgar thinks “the father should be as ward to the son” to manipulate Gloucester, who Kruger imbues with a righteous, searching, sort of horrified energy that he’s able to keep building even as Gloucester’s issues get properly melodramatic.

Kruger, as a blinded, brutalised Gloucester, rises to a powerful emotional register that does justice to the harm done by Edmund’s destructive putsch of self-actualization. Jones, doubling up as the Fool, is particularly good, imbuing the role with an impish, precocious spirit – picture your grandstanding younger cousin at a family gathering. Clinging to Lear’s leg at court, Jones’ performance reminds us how badly Lear needs to cling and be clung to.

While Lear sounds maudlin on paper, I thought the Heywood Society recovered a great deal of the humor from the text, particularly in the figure of Lear himself, as well as his Fool. Laidler’s manic energy as Edmund also helped lighten the tone of the production, offering much needed emotional range in the potentially grim Gloucester storyline.

Coffee and tea were served, which I thought was a highly charming move. Costuming aimed for a kind of timeless cold, wet island aesthetic, with Hagan and Carlill in particular rocking a kind of disco-Viking Hillary Clinton look. The outdoor setting was perfect for long, spooky entrances and for meaningful pacing.

On the whole, this humorous and emotionally rich production made for a thoroughly enjoyable first encounter with King Lear