Midsummer's Night Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most read, most performed and most studied plays. It is one of only two Shakespeare plays to come entirely from his imagination and at its best should be light, funny, romantic, and very accessible. Headlong Theatre and the Nuffield, Southampton, a touring company fresh from the success of their last production of ENRON, have a challenge on their hands.

Their Midsummer updates the setting from ancient Athens not to the present, but to a 1960s film studio. This modernisation allows for the use of film screens and audio recordings incorporated into the action whilst still retaining the romantic escapism of the play. The position of Puck as the film director, popping in and out of scenes is a true puppet-master and helps to anchor the updated setting. The use of technology works surprisingly well, the projected images fitting easily into the action and helping to correlate the double parts of Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania as rulers of both the physical and mystical realms that meet on set. The production also escapes a lot of the typical imagery in other productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: here instead of little girls playing fairies pirouetting to their ethereal overlords, these sprites drive trikes and appear as rival gangs, singing Titania to sleep along to 60s pop.

The cast really works hard to bring fresh humour to one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and the physicality of the performances really warm the audience to the actors. They overact to perfection, as the campness and silliness of the play is at the core of why people love it so much. Small touches, such as the animatronic movement of Bottom’s transformed donkey ears and the posturing of Demetrius and Lysander to impress Helena have the audience in stitches. The cast brings the humour out from the dialogue and extend it physically, a simple humour stopping, thankfully, short of being slapstick.