Original student writing is a feat only rarely accomplished within the Cambridge theatre world, a world of worshiping the classical Greek stage, of dutiful Shakespearean adaptations, and of safe re-enactments of Olivier award winners. Ciaran Chillingworth’s Fairest Creatures (or Things Seemingly Have No Bearing) is a novelty, then, not solely for the inventiveness of its script – inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets, although remaining covertly so – but for its thematic power as well.

Performed within St. Catherine’s chapel, a small and incredibly intimate stage, William (Rox Middleton) is the cynical realist, furrow-browed and anxious, ruminating happily only over the lost past – the pebbles on the hill, his dog Patience – and rendering them immortal in his drawings. That changes, however, when he is brought into contact with John (Sam Knights), the brazen, charismatic interviewer sent by William’s mother for reasons made unclear. At first full of conflict and resistance in their discussions of love and life, John’s challenging of William’s world and its meaning slowly draws them closer, and slowly draws William away from reality itself.

Both Rox Middleton and Sam Knights gave what seemed like masterclasses in acting, both outstanding in relaying the dichotomy of their characters to the audience, an audience that was so close to the stage that every facial expression and quirk could be easily discerned. They bounced off each other well, pinning the play securely down in their animated, at times quite morbid, interaction, whether in their discussion regarding the best method to poison William, in their childlike battle of warring kings with cutlery for swords, or in the noble ‘death’ that William’s king suffers – a funeral complete with decorative fruit from a plastic bag and a bumbling, self-interested eulogy by John. The humour was infectious.

The chapel was an intelligent stage for director Douglas Tawn to choose; the intimacy of the atmosphere lured you relentlessly into Middleton and Knights’ psyches, the characters’ echoes booming from all around, a quite potent setting to a play that very much has the universe, the purpose and meaning of it, at its heart. The dimmed lights and burning candles added to the existential quality of the play, the candles especially as props that pushed Middleton’s speech regarding childbirth (a reference to the Bard’s Sonnet 1) to the dramatic edge.

At times, however, the characters’ speeches were overwhelmed by the decision to use a soundtrack; the organ and cello were supposed to push the drama and theatricality of Middleton and Knights’ ruminations – two people trying to make of their world a Shakespearean drama – and yet it diffused the potency of their words, overcoming them to the point of irritation, despite the beauty of the music itself. There were some bewildering performance decisions, too, that struggled to gain traction – the absurdity of ‘the Postman’ character, the short-lived audience interaction, the hasty and flat conclusion – that tussled with the better aspects of the play.

Fairest Creatures is an emblem of how promising student writing can be in the Cambridge theatre scene. Highly comic, yet at times reaching higher than it should, it is not solely a puzzle for Shakespeare aficionados, but a play for everyone who has thought upon the purpose of the universe and the struggle to unite reality with it, a reality that Chillingworth’s script unites with very well.