We think of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a comedy, but it is full of duress, anger and upset, of disruption and downright cruelty and director Eleanor Rhode doesn’t hide this, they are there from the start with Sirine Saba’s Hippolyta turning her back and walking away from the conqueror whom she now has to marry. Andrew Richardson’s fussy, pedantic Duke Theseus seems an unlikely victorious warrior, but he holds the power nonetheless.
Hermia is a young woman brought before Theseus threatened with the death penalty if she won’t marry Demetrius, the man her furious father has chosen, while Demetrius has abandoned heartbroken Helena, to whom he was previously engaged. This is hardly a happy place.
Hermia’s lover Lysander plans an escape beyond the reach of Athenian law, and together, they set off into the woods outside the city where, in the fairy world, there is a rift too between King Oberon and Queen Titania (also played by Saba and Richardson).
Alerted by Helena, who knows the lovers’ plan, Demetrius goes after them, Helena trailing behind him. Oberon, seeing them, takes pity on Helena and decides to magically make Demetrius love her: a job he entrusts to his attendant Puck (who messes things up, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius). The fairy king isn’t so kind to his queen and uses the same magic to play a revengeful trick on her.
The wood also becomes a rehearsal place for a group of townsfolk planning to offer a play to entertain Theseus’ court. Their leading actor, a weaver called Bottom, finds himself given a key role in the fairy feud. Matthew Baynton is a pinstripe-suited Bottom, enthusiastic and eager and especially delightful as a Pyramus in white tights when they present their play—he is clearly a theatre buff inspired by Olivier’s Richard III display of dying.
On a largely empty stage, surrounded by darkness, Lucy Osborne’s settings present three different worlds. Gauzes on which white lines draw 3D arches create an elegant Athenian court, a huge sun disk behind them; the interior of a tailor’s shop offers a more realistic, down-to-earth background for the amdram group and for the wood, a multitude of balloon-like globes that change their colours and patterning arch over the stage; they could be its leafy canopy, myriad other worlds or simply a world where a fairy can be a darting spot of light and a person suddenly appear out of nowhere. After the interval, the stage becomes wooded by ladders.
Costumes are modern: second half of the 20th century—Oberon in an Adam Ant outfit. He seems fascinated by human behaviour and keeps a watch on the young lovers: Hermia (Dawn Sievewright) Lysander (Ryan Hutton), Helena (Boadicea Ricketts) and Demetrius (Nicholas Armfield). Their frustration and tension produces a great of fully justified shouting, but they gain sympathy as well as raise laughter. Creating much of the mayhem is Katherine Pearce’s madcap Puck, who seems to have other fairies at her fingertips and converses with ones we can’t see. She is even bold enough to be cheeky to Oberon. When ordered to hurry, she speaks of her speed while actually slowing down to almost a standstill.
Lysander claims equal social status with Demetrius but lacks his RP class accent, and a blonde Hermia and dark Helena don’t match Shakespeare’s text (though I think those descriptions were left out), but this production is true to the spirit of the play. Despite cuts that concentrate the story (but sadly lose some great verse), it plays for 2½ hours plus interval, but it has a magical quality that holds the attention (aided by input from illusion director John Bulleid) and the laughter it produces and the supposed happy ending all tick the comedy box. It may be a midsummer dream, but it fits the bill for Christmas and New Year entertainment.
Reviewer: Howard Loxton