Founded in 2004 at the University of Kent by one Stephen Purcell – then a youthful MA student with more enthusiasm than funding – this self-styled “vibrant and anarchic” touring company has spent the last two decades inflicting open-air Shakespeare on an unsuspecting British public. Drawing freely on commedia dell’arte, pantomime, stand-up and silent movies, they claim to restore “the riotous energy of the clown” to the Bard, which in practice means a lot of running about, audience participation and the occasional free show in a park when the weather holds.