They couldn't have asked for a better night for it.

As the wind howled and the rain poured outside the crowd huddled into the Playhouse for one of Shakespeare's delicious problem plays.

The problem, it seems, is how to categorise it.

It has the wicked sparkling wit and pastoral charm of As You Like It mixed up with Othello's destructive jealousy and the kind of rage normally reserved for King Lear.

Northern Broadsides make an impressive job of the first half, teasing every bit of meaning out of the densely packed verse, bringing its beautiful poetry to believable life.

Ruth Alexander Rubin is wonderfully no-nonsense as Paulina, the Queen's advocate, while Conrad Nelson gets Leontes' bitter jealousy across while keeping him just sympathetic enough to be believable.

After a tense first half, the second part is a burst of comic joy, with superb musical interludes performed by the ensemble.

To find a cast who bring blank verse to life is hard enough these days, but one who can form a band too? It was an absolute delight, made all the sweeter by the flash of unreasonable anger that makes The Winter's Tale more than a game of two halves.

Polixenes' fury and his treatment of his son and the woman he wants to marry are a brilliant reminder that joy and sorrow are flip sides of the same coin.

Mike Hugo steals much of the second half as loveable rogue Autolycus, who keeps the thread running through Bohemia and Sicily.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to read those lines again without thinking of his Bob Dylan impression, or the genuinely funny song where the wenches compete X Factor style.

We don't see enough performances of The Winter's Tale. Perhaps because it's not a common set text, or maybe theatre companies find its problem play tag too much of a struggle.

But if this production is anything to go by, I hope we see it much more often. Get a ticket while you can.