Shakespeare is on trial – and you’re right at the heart of the action.

Nuffield has been transformed to allow its newest creation, a world premiere of a fascinating play exploring the relationship between the Bard and the Earl of Southampton, to be performed in the round and the space is unrecognisable.

Audience members clambered over makeshift stands to reach their seats, right in the thick of it, for a packed, hotly-anticipated performance. They were spellbound from the start.

A young William Shakespeare stands in court, denying he has ever met his patron, despite evidence to the contrary.

Picking apart history during a dramatic 90 minutes, we learn that two heartfelt dedications in his poems Venus and Adonis and Tarquin and Lucrece are the only written testimonies suggesting a link between the two.

But that hasn’t stopped centuries of conjecture over whether they were collaborators, friends or lovers.

Was Shakespeare employed by the Earl and was the writer used to incite revolution and the Earl’s jail term?

Dedication, written by Southampton’s own Nick Dear and directed by Nufffield’s Sam Hodges, looks back at various versions of the truth of their relationship.

We are treated to everything from tender moments to talk of treason and from dancing to a rather impressive sword fight.

Tom McKay is utterly believable as the single-minded Shakespeare, while Tom Rhys-Harries has the petulant, childish behaviour of the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, pinned to perfection.

The intriguing set is very much part of the action as it lifts and turns to meet the changes in mood.

Set in the Elizabethan era, the story takes us from Southampton House, the Earl’s seat in London, to a sojourn in Verona and then to Titchfield in Hampshire, giving us a riveting look at the life of our greatest writer and his local links.

Ninety minutes of rapt silence was broken by rapturous applause at the end of a compelling evening.

LORELEI REDDIN

Dedication – Shakespeare and Southampton runs until Saturday October 8.