‘Ovid wrote The Metamorphoses in quarantine. What are you doing with your time?” William Shakespeare is in the garden, fretting about his lack of productivity. Bard in the Yard, by the company Will & Co, brings socially distanced Shakespeare to your home. Tonight, the show has Lucy Aarden as Will, leaping around my girlfriend’s parents’ lawn with a feathered quill, a ruffled white shirt, and everyone watching in hysterics. “This is Shakespeare fanfic,” laughs Victoria Baumgartner, the show’s writer and director, who came up with the idea of the portable play in May. “It was when the entire industry was crumbling around us,” she says. “We didn’t know when we were going to work again, so I thought, if people can’t come to us, let’s go to them.” This was also around the time when Twitter was awash with admonishing memes about Shakespeare writing King Lear in quarantine. Leaping on the idea of pressured productivity, the 40-minute show is framed by the idea of Will needing a bit of help to create a new blockbuster. In the script, Baumgartner toys smartly with the parallels between our two plagues, riffing on lockdown hobbies and comparing theatres’ competition with Netflix to the enticing thrill of bear-baiting. Aarden is one of 24 Shakespeares turning up at gardens and parks across the city. Barrelling in, fully in character, it’s hard not to warm to her immediately. She’s quick, energetic and brilliantly funny. Her delivery is spot on and she uses the space as if it’s been her stage for weeks. She’s a natural standup, deftly playing with what’s around her, and improvising some priceless scenes with the chickens that live at the end of the garden. Even Sylvia (not named after the character from The Two Gentlemen of Verona), who is normally fairly intolerant of strangers, seems to like Aarden, happily being addressed with reverence during a number of monologues. The idea of the audience helping to piece together a new play is quickly forgotten in favour of a best-of-Shakespeare showcase. It would be more fun, too, for the audience suggestions to have a bigger impact on the consequences of the show. But Aarden has the gumption and energy to pull off what becomes a bit of a show-reel, with little nods back to the promised narrative. Her energy is infectious, and she makes the performance feel like a real treat. “It’s the best feeling to be able to perform,” Aarden says after the show. She’s been practising at home, persuading her family and dog to watch. “It’s an amazing way for me, as a female performer, to get to play Hamlet and Lear – and Romeo! I’ve always wanted to play Romeo. It’s so cool to get to feel the sound of those words.” You don’t need to be a Shakespeare fanatic to get it all; there are just as many in-jokes about our current politics. “We’re trying to make it accessible for people who think it’s not for them,” Baumgartner says, “If we stop putting Shakespeare so high on a pedestal, more people would feel like they could have a conversation with his work.” Our group has a mixture of levels of Shakespeare knowledge, and even if a few of the less famous monologues go over a head or two, Aarden’s easy humour always draws us back in. And what if it rains? “Carry on if it’s safe to do so,” Aarden shrugs. “I’ve done so many years of outdoor Shakespeare where everyone’s sat there in a poncho. And there are so many lines of Shakespeare that talk about rain, you could improv it.” She beams and gestures to the greenery around her. “It’s such a celebration of being outside, this performance.” Stories, as they say, comforteth like sunshine after rain.