A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It) @ King's Theatre

The show opens with the audience dodging falling branches and improvising umbrellas, as trees, foliage and a fully working fountain are dragged through the auditorium. Having set the tone, this level of comic surprise and spectacle continues throughout the show, which consists of the mechanicals' performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. There's a VIP audience of Duke Theseus' family (brilliantly portrayed), which enables jokes about mobile phones, half-constructed royal boxes and a middle aged woman for whom every event is an excuse for a long rambling story about her village.

In the programme notes the Director, Dmitry Krymov, discusses two theses of the show. Firstly, that art comes from mess and bustle -- from scraps lying around, combined with human joy and passion. The show is certainly a triumph of ingenuity and joyous broad comedy, even if, somewhat ironically, art's spontaneity is communicated through careful drilling, elaborate construction, and an army of resources. 

The second theme is Shakespeare's holding of tragedy next to comedy, like the two sides of a coin. But on the night I attended, the required turn on a sixpence – from comic to tragic – didn't work for me. And the fact that some members of the audience laughed when Pyramus was stabbed, points to this being a general problem.  

All the performances – tumbling, clowning, acting, and especially the singing (and the dog) – are superb of course. There's also a lovely touch of romance between the garrulous older woman and the stage hand/Jaques/Shakespeare character.

The show is brilliantly executed broad comedy, but ultimately, I was left feeling the lack of something a bit more... well, uplifting.