After a dark, nightmarish, wintery staging at the Globe late last year, the light returns to A Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer with a jubilant, hearty production of the Dream from Emily Lim.
As one of the most performed plays in Shakespeare’s literary canon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first thought to have been performed between 1594 and 1596, and was most likely created for a marriage celebration.
Set in Athens, four young lovers who are caught up in a bewildering love quadrangle decide to escape beyond the city walls into the forest. In the woods at the same time is a band of amateur actors rehearsing a play for the forthcoming royal wedding of Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta.
It is Midsummer’s Night, and the humans find themselves ensnared in a world of mischievous fairies. During an evening of trickery and midsummer madness, hearts grow open, spells go askew, and everyone goes through some form of transformation.
Although Lim sometimes has a tendency to try too hard to squeeze out gags from the text’s giddiness, her direction, for the most part, is streamlined, and she manages the chaos of the play very coherently. Lim also skilfully creates the illusory artifice of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while at the same time never quite letting us forget that the actors are essentially giving a performance of a play within a play.
Attending a performance at the Globe is an experience in itself. The outdoor staging of the venue brings an immersive quality to productions, and this version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream more than exploits that to the full.
There is a great deal of audience interaction, perhaps too much towards the end of the second half, which feels overly long. Here the production becomes self-indulgent and feels relentlessly stuck in audience-participation panto mode. With a trade union-styled banner hung as a backdrop, it ends with a spectator singalong which feels insincere, but strangely morally right.
Audrey Brisson oozes primal sexuality as Titania, which heightens the impression of an emasculated King Oberon, played by Enyi Okoronkwo. “Though she be little”, Sophie Cox delivers a fierce Hermia, while Mel Lowe is equally outstanding as Lysander. Romaya Weaver and Gavi Singh Chera, as Helena and Demetrius, also make a dynamic stage couple.
The mechanicals work together well, with Adrian Richards gloriously over the top as Bottom.
Movement direction by James Cousins proves especially effective in the lovers’ quarrel scene and also gives a shapeshifting quality to the fairy entourage.
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