As with their Julius Caesar, Hytner and designer Bunny Christie have configured the Bridge Theatre in the round, with an added promenade audience mingling with the cast; experience has taught me this amounts to being a groundling for five times the price and my bad back can’t handle that, so I opted for a seat instead. It means I might not have been in the thick of it, but it was the right decision as I could enjoy the show without the distraction of back pain.
The long preamble is partly because I don’t only keep this blog for the benefit of others but as my own record of the shows I’ve seen; and in this case the big or small switch-ups and surprises in Hytner’s interpretation are a major part of it, so from here on in beware of spoilers. If you can see the show (and there’s an NT Live screening in October so you don’t need to be in London,) you’ve probably figured out by now that I recommend it, and should stop reading now. If you can’t, or already have, carry on. Not that the story doesn’t start as expected: Theseus (Oliver Chris) is about to marry Hippolyta (Gwendoline Christie) after defeating the Amazon queen in battle. The thwarted lovers Lysander (Kit Young) and Hermia (Isis Hainsworth) plead their case with Theseus but get short shrift, so flee to the forest pursued by Hermia’s admirer Demetrius (Paul Adeyefa) and his admirer Helena (Tessa Bonham Jones.)
But once we get to the forest there’s a clue that things have been switched around a bit when it’s revealed that David Moorst’s camp, monkey-like Puck is actually Titania’s (Christie) servant, not Oberon’s (Chris) as written. This sets up the fact that it’s now Titania who wants to steal a changeling child from Oberon, and who uses the love potion on him; so now Oberon falls for Hammed Animashaun’s Bottom when he’s transformed into an ass. In a show that’s also happy to make the odd smaller textual change and ad-lib, this partial role-swap is the perfect twist: It’s fresh enough to give the show a whole unique identity but it actually makes surprisingly little difference to events as a whole. Chris and Animashaun make a hilariously devoted odd-couple, and Hytner gives them a series of comic setpieces each of which lands stronger than the last.
The sexual fluidity at the heart of the love-potion story is something that bleeds out into the rest of the play, so Puck and Titania’s messing around with the quartet of lovers sees them toy with the idea of Lysander/Demetrius and Hermia/Helena pairings as well. And this feel that everyone in the play is kind-of pansexual means it’s possible to introduce a strong LGBTQ+ element without accidentally invoking a load of unhelpful and damaging gay stereotypes, Emma. It never becomes the whole point of the show, but it’s a joyous part of its DNA and the introduction of a Pride flag becomes quite a moving moment.
This is a show that’s hard to find a weak link in – I thought the lovers might be it after a lacklustre start (changes in English usage mean the “Do you marry him” line is never going to land but turning it into a question is not the answer*) but once their main plot starts after the interval and Bunny Christie interprets flowerbeds in a very literal way, everything gets very fun. Over with the Mechanicals, Felicity Montagu is an inspired choice to play a slightly hassled Mistress Quince, Jamie-Rose Monk’s Snug is joyously stroppy, and Animashaun seems to have done a lot of work on his diction in recent years, which has freed him up to deliver a properly loveable Bottom. If anything I didn’t love Moorst’s gurning Puck – in fairness if this is the first thing you ever saw him in it’s probably a perfectly on-theme characterisation, but I’ve been seeing him do this “chewing the inside of his face” performance for a few years now. But fair play to the amount of circus skills he’s learnt to fit in with the acrobatics of the other fairies, who swing on trapezes and even stay hanging over the crowd during the interval to keep the festival feel going throughout.
As well as quite simply having fun with the play there’s a satisfying through-line to Hytner’s Dream that just makes it feel so well thought-out: The show opens with Christie’s Hippolyta encased in a glass display case, being presented to the audience as a reminder that she’s not a willing bride but a spoil of war. When the joyless Theseus refuses to help Hermia, Hippolyta's still stuck trapped behind glass, desperate to help but unable to, and once she’s finally set free she’s frosty to her betrothed. But while the show doesn’t quite suggest Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania are actually the same people, it does show them as being connected in some way, and Oberon’s experience affects Theseus vicariously; it’s only when he returns at the end of the play, having discovered his humanity and demonstrated it by helping the lovers, that Hippolyta is ready to actually acknowledge him as worthy of her. It all shows a sure hand in how to acknowledge the darkness in the play without having to suck all the jokes out of it, Joe.
And just when it seems the twists are over, this newly-discovered humanity brings one last glorious moment: You’ve got to hand it to Oliver Chris for managing to make Theseus of all people one of the funniest characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream but while Lysander and Demetrius provide their usual snark at the Rude Mechanicals’ play, Chris’ Theseus is watching it in absolute earnestness, and is enthralled – Bottom is definitely getting that sixpence a day for being the best actor the Duke ever saw, because he actually is the best actor he ever saw – or at least the best one he ever actually paid any attention to. Maybe it’s this last metatheatrical twist that makes the production feel so much like falling in love with theatre all over again – and I really hope this becomes a lot of people’s first Shakespeare because it’s really going to have that effect: Because Hytner has turned the play-within-a-play into us watching someone go through exactly that transformative experience. Or hey, maybe it’s just the fact that “Oh it’s a hat!” made me laugh so hard I had a coughing fit.
In a way it’s ironic that after a couple of years of the venue trying to find an identity, it really feels like it’s done it when Hytner’s fallen back on his extensive Shakespeare experience – which is great, but tricky when this is meant to be a new writing venue. But regardless of whether it means anything in the long term, The Bridge has a feel-good hit at the moment, and with “new audiences” always being such a holy grail this is A Midsummer Night’s Dream that seems perfectly pitched between people coming to it fresh, and those of us who practically know it off by heart but can still get surprised and utterly charmed by a new approach.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is booking until the 31st of August at the Bridge Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
*it says something about how even the more adventurous productions can get wrapped up in tHE saNCtitY oF VeRsE that in those 25 years I haven’t seen one yet that’s simply dropped the “do you” at the start so as to just, you know, deliver the actual joke
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