Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense visited Oxford only last year, in a super production fresh from the West End stage. Who would dare to tackle the work again so soon, with so much risk of odious comparison?

The Oxford student company Jackson Productions, that’s who, and a fair fist they are making of it, to the delight of audiences at Lady Margaret Hall’s Simpkins Lee Theatre.

The venue was chosen for its art deco styling suited to the 1930s setting of the P.G. Wodehouse novel, The Code of the Woosters, on which the play is based.

That is what it says in the programme (which, oddly, makes no mention of the writers Robert and David Goodale). My guess had been that an interior so like that of a crematorium stood in need of a bit of fun.

This is certainly being supplied by the energetic three-man team of actors under director Olly Jackson.

The show conforms, as it must, to the template set by Sean Foley, who had charge of the West End production. Wodehouse’s witty dialogue is blended with knockabout physical comedy, in entertainment that celebrates the craft of theatre while poking fun at its conventions.

The starting point is Bertie Wooster’s determination to tell of recent calamitous events in his life by acting them out for us.

Bertie (Joe Stephenson in properly languid style) plays only himself, while the gallery of other characters is shared between his valet Jeeves (Johnny Wiles) and the no less versatile Seppings (Adam Diaper), the butler to Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia.

It is the “old ancestor” who sets the action in motion with her demand that Bertie visit Totleigh Towers – home to the terrifying Sir Watkyn Bassett - to steal a valuable silver cow creamer coveted by his uncle, a rival collector.

Tied up in the plot are the amorous intrigues of Bassett’s drippy daughter Madeline, fiancée of Bertie’s newt-fancying pal Gussy Finknottle, and her cousin Stiffy Byng. These tangentially involve Sir Watkyn’s odious side-kick Roderick Spode.

Much of the fun arises from the three actors struggling to present what good sense says they cannot. Jeeves, for instance, in one of the play’s funniest scenes, portrays Sir Watkyn and Sfiffy simultaneously, with a costume divided down the middle.

The play continues until Saturday.

Box office: jeevesandwoosteroxford.com/tickets

FOUR STARS