Creation Theatre is known - and loved - in Oxford for its ambitious, ornate, site-specific productions, usually adaptations of classic texts. It’s rare for them to stage a production in an actual theatre - last December’s A Christmas Carol was a notable (and an excellent) exception. Their latest, however, is no break from tradition; a story set in a pub, staged in one (the show is currently touring a range of spots in Oxfordshire and one in London). The play in question? A new adaptation of the 15th-century morality play Everyman, written by an anonymous author. This modern-day update has been crafted specifically for Creation Theatre by poet and dramatist Glynn Maxwell.

The plot in the original Everyman is not especially subtle. God is a character, and laments to the audience about the shabby state of humanity’s morals. Everyman, the main character, is unsurprisingly, the everyman and audience stand-in. Death arrives and tells Everyman that he must face his reckoning. Everyman begs for more time, and Death allows him to choose a companion to accompany him on his journey. But are any of his friends - who include characters called Goods and Kindred - up for the task?

That plot, to some viewers today (this one, specifically) would feel unbearably didactic and self-satisfied. Thankfully, Maxwell’s adaption (directed here by Helen Eastman) injects some ambiguity and nuance into the story. I’d never heard of Everyman before attending this performance, but this isn’t the first modernisation of the text. Pulitzer-Prize-nommed playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins did it a few years ago with his modern spin Everybody, which used the lens to look at racism (among the play’s unshakeable themes of death and purpose) and so did poet and dramatist Carol Ann Duffy, whose modernised adaption of Everyman skewered rampant materialism and destruction of the environment.

Here our characters consist of a group of English tourists vacationing on a fictional island. They take shelter from a rainstorm in the one ‘English pub’ on the island. There’s Yvonn, the poised and erudite everyman (played with intelligence and fierce focus by Anna Tolputt), and her best friend Hayley, who represents freewheeling vanity and self-absorption (Hayley Murray, genuinely funny in the role). There’s a cheerful lunkhead called Denny, who talks a big game but lacks moral fibre (Herb Caulafo), an older lady called Elaine who embodies privilege and mannered tradition (Miranda Foster), and a seductive and conniving woman called Amelia (Aisla Joy). Finally, they are joined by an arrogant financial trader named Nick, who is profoundly greedy (Nicholas Osmond).

The characters talk, flirt, bicker and joke among themselves. It is wise, and interesting to me, that Maxwell allows his characters to be largely unlikable, not through amoral deeds but rather through their incessant self-obsession. The dialogue is intriguing and entertaining (despite occasional self-consciousness, as when the characters each assign themselves roles within the gang like ‘the muscle’ and ‘the brain’).

Their moral quandary comes when they begin to hear a little girl crying behind the bar. She is separated from her parents, who live in the dangerous nearby area of Boatman Town, where taxis refuse to run. Will any of the characters be actually willing to help her home?

The piece’s final character is The Waiter, who dispenses the characters' drinks as well as this information, with the unreadable neutrality of a service industry professional that slowly gives way to something more and more malevolent and supernatural. Samuel Rayner, who also assistant-directed, gives a subtle, stand-out performance.

An actual pub was an excellent choice of locale, to the extent that I struggle to imagine this adaptation working as well on a stage. The majority of the action takes place at a larger central table, with the audience seated around the performers. Part of the growing unease of the piece has to do with the characters trapped within their environment - first by the rain, then by the circumstances of the evening, and the immediacy aided in creating this claustrophobia. There was an actual bar for The Waiter to toil behind, gathering the audience’s real empties and retreating to polish glasses. This made him feel far less performative to the audience, adding to his menace. An intriguing sense of hyper-realism defined the whole show. When Hayley scrolls on her phone during a lull in conversation, it does not feel staged.

The show starts as unfolding, thrillingly, in real-time, and at some imperceptible point gets divested from, which was somewhat unsatisfying. It’s clear several hours have passed within the show's hour-long runtime. The way the show played with time could have felt more deliberate, perhaps by adding creative montages of some kind - or by simply extending the piece. I think the sturdy, if pious, framework of the original play could have supported a longer runtime, which in turn could have allowed for more depth for all the characters, not just Yvonn. While the others are unmistakably meant to be archetypes more than fully rounded individuals, part of the point is that the ‘Everyman’ of the narrator, and by extension, the audience, contains all the others' same motivations within themself. It would have been powerful and fascinating to see through the other characters' eyes a bit more deeply, and that could only have been done with additional time.

As it is, the story and its characters, besides Yvonn, function as those in a fairytale or parable would; we are interested in their fates in as far as they serve the plot, but they are not there to empathise with. Until the final few minutes, which are bright with emotion, both the characters and their central conflict feel somewhat abstract, more thought experiments than cultural commentary. However, an hour is long enough to sustain this suspension of disbelief, and the piece feels as quick, strong and sharp as the mid-show shots the characters down. I appreciate the refreshing confidence of the production, which knew what it was doing throughout and got to its point with minimal equivocation. Ultimately, this is a creative, surefooted adaptation, that makes for a gripping night at the theatre.