Non-review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Flabbergast / Wilton's Music Hall)

It's been a while since I decided I was better off cutting my losses and leaving a show at the interval (in fact this is my first time post-Panny D) but physical theatre company Flabbergast's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream did nothing to make me want to return. As a result I can't review the show as I didn't see all of it, but I can say the relentless clowning style of performance put me off from the start. The blurb says the company has a respectful approach to the text, and I'm sure they do, as the bombastic performance by whoever happens to be speaking it at any given time is generally accompanied by slapstick business inspired by the lines. In practice it means Oberon lays an egg at one point, and anything one of the rude mechanicals says or does is accompanied by a chorus of wailing, gossiping and clucking from the rest of them.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(RSC/RST)

When a theatre decides when to schedule A Midsummer Night's Dream they tend to do so with a fairly literal approach to the title; if it shows up out of season that usually means we're in for one of the "darker and edgier" takes that honestly believes it's the first production ever to notice the line "I wooed thee with my sword" and proceeds to apply it to every scene, Joe. So it's refreshing to see Eleanor Rhode's new RSC production - the last Shakespeare of Erica Whyman's interregnum period - open in a very different way: The lines about winning love with injury are still there, but their context feels a lot less personal. The Duke of Athens and Queen of the Amazons' wedding is definitely an arranged one made as part of a peace treaty, but both of them are pawns in this situation, and Bally Gill's sweetly awkward Theseus is clearly intimidated by Sirine Saba's businesslike Hippolyta.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

Previously at Shakespeare's Globe... the theatre was the target of hate, protests and threats when they staged a play about how celebrity cross-dresser Joan of Arc might, and brace yourself for this one, not have been entirely a girly girl. Continuing to stake her claim as the most casually badass Artistic Director out there at the moment, Michelle Terry has launched her latest summer season with A Midsummer Night's Dream - a reliable crowd-pleaser at a time when they need bums on seats, but with a cast guaranteed to piss off exactly the right people. Outside of being cast almost entirely with female, trans and non-binary actors, Elle While's production isn't a particularly high-concept one, but it's a lot of fun. With at least three separate storylines vying for attention, and some of the plots disappearing from the stage for long periods, I often come out of the play thinking one element has dominated.

Re-review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

I have fond memories of, and emotional connections to, a lot of venues, but in the last year of theatres facing an existential crisis it was the thought of never being able to go to Shakespeare's Globe again that hurt the most. So it's probably for the best, given I might have got a bit emotional, that my first trip back to the main house in two summers was to a production I'd seen there before: Sean Holmes' fiesta-style A Midsummer Night's Dream from 2019 has returned to launch the 2021 season, and though both venue and production have had to make a few changes while COVID-19 restrictions are still in place, both have retained the atmosphere that makes them special. In the audience, along with social distancing in the three galleries, and all shows playing without intervals (to stop everyone crowding to the loos at once,) the most obvious change is in the Yard, where there's usually up to 700 standing groundlings. For the first couple of months of the season these have been replaced with just three rows of temporary seats arranged by support bubbles.

Stage-to-screen review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (BBC Wales)

Russell T Davies' TV adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream first aired in 2016 as part of the BBC's commemoration of the fourth centenary of Shakespeare's death. I had planned to watch it at the time but never got round to it - that summer was one of those particularly full of competing productions of the play and I'd seen quite enough of them. Apart from that, it was clear from the opening shot of Athens as a fascist state draped in red, white and black ersatz-swastika insignia that Davies' version was going to be one of those defined entirely by the line "I wooed thee with my sword" (not necessarily a problem in itself, by this point I think I was mainly tired of people thinking they'd discovered a uniquely dark take on the play, when in fact I would say bad-guy Theseus was the standard interpretation of the 2010s.) In any case, with "Culture in Quarantine" the latest BBC strand to heavily feature Shakespeare, the film got repeated on BBC Four, giving it another month on iPlayer for me to finally catch up.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

The third and last of this year's major London Midsummer Night's Dreams comes courtesy of Sean Holmes in his new position as an associate at the Globe. In a crowded field the production needs to do a lot to stand out: While there's a couple of interesting little twists on the familiar story this isn't a particularly high-concept Dream; instead everyone's energies have been thrown into mining every possible moment of comedy, with great success. Jean Chan's Athens is more South American than Southern European, the design evoking a pastel-coloured Rio Carnival, although to start with this is for appearances only - Duke Theseus (Peter Bourke) is holding festivities for his upcoming marriage to Hippolyta (Victoria Elliott) but the latter has no choice in the matter of marrying a much older man, and is far from thrilled with it - this is the second Dream this summer to have the Amazon Queen arrive on stage in a box, although it's played slightly more for laughs here.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

After a valiant effort by Richard II at the start of the year, A Midsummer Night's Dream has well and truly come along to replace last year's Macbethorama as 2019's most ubiquitous Shakespeare. The Bridge, Open Air Theatre and Globe are all showing off their Bottoms, and it's the second leg's turn for me as director Dominic Hill is brought in from Glasgow to Regent's Park for a new take on the play that must surely be the venue's most-performed. It's the story of Oberon, King of the Fairies (Kieran Hill) and his plan to humiliate his Queen Titania (Amber James) into giving him a changeling child of hers, with a plot involving a love potion; and the mortals who get caught up in the middle of the chaos when they wander into the woods, including a troupe of amateur actors and a quartet of starcrossed lovers.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Bridge Theatre)

About 25 years ago Adrian Noble’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of a string of RSC productions that first inspired my love of theatre in general and Shakespeare in particular, and Anthony Ward’s design – the enchanted forest made entirely of a mismatched collection of light bulbs, umbrellas and wooden doors – cemented the way I see magic being created out of the purely theatrical. A cack-handed attempt at a screen adaptation means it’s probably not that fondly remembered any more, but it inevitably holds a special place for me. As one of the most popular Shakespeare plays I’ve seen many – too many – productions since, so while it’s hard to say if Nicholas Hytner’s pansexual, Cirque du Soleil-style Dream is flat out the best one I’ve ever seen (and in among the bad and average ones there’s been a lot I’ve really loved,) I can say that in that quarter of a century it’s the first one to send me out of the building with the same excited buzz and reinvigorated love of theatre as the first time.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Young Vic)

My first two Shakespeare productions of the year fell on consecutive nights, and while both are comedies they couldn't present more of a contrast, even before I got to their respective theatres: Where I'd been looking forward to Twelfth Night, last year saw A Midsummer Night's Dream even more overexposed than usual, so I was approaching it with some trepidation. Added to that was the publicity promising a particularly dark approach to the play, a cliché that can usually be taken as meaning "we failed to actually make it funny," and in any case the nightmare flipside of the Dream is frequently-explored territory. In the runup to a royal wedding Hermia (Jemima Rooper) and Lysander (John Dagleish,) whose love is forbidden, escape the threat of death by fleeing to the forest. They're pursued by Demetrius (Oliver Alvin-Wilson,) in love with Hermia, and Helena (Anna Madeley,) in love with Demetrius.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Southwark Playhouse)

My third Midsummer Night's Dream in less than a month, and there's been at least three other productions or adaptations in London recently that I could have booked but decided not to (plus a TV version I'm saving for when I'm a bit less Dreamed out.) The RSC called their version A Play For The Nation, and that seems apt enough as it might take the entire nation to cast all these productions. At least Simon Evans' at Southwark Playhouse requires less of a hefty cast list than usual, instead putting more pressure on each of its seven actors. Evans turns it into a play-within-a-play-within-a-play, the show opening with a cast using their own names and recreating the first scene with the Mechanicals - except instead of Pyramus and Thisbe, they're trying to figure out how to share out the 17 major roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream itself. Only Melanie Fullbrook gets just the one role as the cack-handed fairy Puck, who also serves as narrator, helping to fill in the gaps.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

I think I've done a good job of keeping an open mind about Emma Rice taking over the Globe; the former Kneehigh boss has been responsible for various shows I've really not liked in the past, and hasn't helped with comments in the papers about shaking up the text, and the rarely-performed Shakespeares staying rarely-performed under her watch. But people can surprise you* and there's been good buzz around her debut production - indeed the sole Shakespeare play she'll be directing herself in her first year - so I was cautiously optimistic about her take on the currently-ubiquitous A Midsummer Night's Dream. The setting is, sort-of, the Globe itself, where the rude mechanicals become a group of the venue's volunteer stewards, led by Rita Quince (Lucy Thackeray,) who opens the show with a funny but stern lecture on how to behave, before deciding to turn actors themselves with a show to celebrate the royal wedding.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Play for the Nation (RSC / Barbican & tour)

This year's official "Shakespeare play I'm going to end up seeing so often I'll be quoting it in my sleep" is clearly A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is packing in the productions over the next couple of months - I've got at least three planned between now and July, and I'm not even seeing all the versions London has to offer. First up is Erica Whyman's touring one for the RSC, subtitled A Play for the Nation for reasons that will become apparent. As a royal wedding approaches in ancient Athens, another potential marriage is in jeopardy: Hermia's (Mercy Ojelade) father won't approve of her marrying her beloved Lysander (Jack Holden) because he sees Demetrius (Chris Nayak) as a more suitable match. The two lovers escape to the forest, but Helena (Laura Riseborough,) in love with Demetrius, inexplicably thinks betraying them to him will help her own chances of getting him back.

Theatre review: The Dreaming

No, The Dreaming isn't a musical theatre adaptation of The Sandman - I don't even know if you should feel relieved or disappointed by that. In fact Howard Goodall and Charles Hart's musical transplants the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream to a rural part of England in 1913. The names have changed but the plotlines are much the same: Charlotte (Holly Julier) has run away to marry Alexander (Alastair Hill) followed by David (Joshua Tonks) who also loves her, and Jennifer (Rachel Flynn,) who loves David. Meanwhile the local vicar (Michael Chance) is bringing together a group of locals to perform a mummers' play about Saint George slaying the dragon. Both groups find their lives complicated when they get caught in the middle of an argument between Sylvia (Daisy Tonge) and Angel (Christopher Hancock,) leaders of the magical Woodlanders.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Deafinitely Theatre / Globe to Globe)

Deafinitely Theatre first came to Shakespeare's Globe for the original 2012 Globe to Globe season, contributing British Sign Language as one of the many languages the canon was performed in. Love's Labour's Lost was a bit of a wordy choice of comedy to have performed silently, but the company's been invited back this year to produce a new show, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is an infintely sillier play with plenty of opportunities for physical comedy. In addition, there's more here now for people who don't know BSL: The popularity of their first Globe vist led Deafinitely to broaden their scope, from a deaf theatre for deaf audiences, to a deaf theatre for all audiences. So as well as the scene synopses on screens, we now also get a bit of Shakespeare's original text. The cast now includes the odd hearing actor, like Anna-Maria Nabirye, who was a standout in the 2013 Faction season, and here plays a fairy who, along with Alim Jayda's Puck, translates back into English some of the more crucial dialogue.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bristol Old Vic / Handspring Puppet Company / Barbican)

One of the directors of War Horse, Tom Morris reunites with South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company for the first time since they created the animals for that global juggernaut. This time their skill at breathing life into inanimate objects is required to bring to life Shakespeare's fairyland of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Two unconnected stories are brought together by the fairies in the woods outside Athens: Lysander and Hermia flee the city and her father's demands that she marry another man. But that man, Demetrius, has followed them, led by Helena, the woman he once loved and who still loves him. A fairy plot to untangle the muddle only makes things worse. Meanwhile the upcoming marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta spurs the city's tradesmen to put on a play to perform at the royal wedding. They rehearse in the woods, where they too fall foul of mischievous spirits.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Michael Grandage Company at the Noël Coward Theatre)

One of the big theatrical events of 2013, the Michael Grandage season at the Noël Coward is already nearing its end with the first of the two Shakespeare plays that conclude the residency.

The star casting for A Midsummer Night's Dream sees Sheridan Smith as Titania and David Walliams as Bottom, but the cast also includes a nice bit of continuity with the rest of the season so far, with one cast member returning from each of the previous productions: From The Cripple of Inishmaan, Pádraic Delaney plays Oberon; from Peter and Alice, Stefano Braschi plays Demetrius; and from Privates on Parade, Sam Swainsbury plays Lysander.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

Never let it be said that Dominic Dromgoole doesn't like the jig that ends every performance at Shakespeare's Globe. For his new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream he's not just reserved it for the end but given us one to open the show with as well - in this case it's a dance representation of the battle between Athenians and Amazons that sees Theseus take Hippolyta as his queen. And since we have Michelle Terry as Hippolyta you can be assured the conflict hasn't quite ended there - she may have accepted him but right from the start Terry makes it clear she won't be sitting back and letting him make all the decisions. This prickly brand of affection between her and John Light's Theseus is one the two actors carry over to their other roles as the Fairy King and Queen of the forest, Oberon and Titania - here a very earthy, animalistic pair of deities, the animal heads of the fairies not making it that much of a stretch to see Titania fall for Bottom when he gets one of his own.

Theatre Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Open Air Theatre)

Alternating with Ragtime at Regent's Park is a play that's almost synonymous with the open air venue, although this take on A Midsummer Night's Dream is far from a frothy, family picnic affair. Taking his cue from the memoirs of Mikey Walsh, who provides the programme notes, Matthew Dunster's production is a Big Fat Gypsy Dream, relocating the action to a caravan site that looks set to be flattened to make way for a Westfield-style shopping centre. In a subculture where arranged marriages still exist, Hermia (Hayley Gallivan) loves Lysander (Tom Padley) but her father wants her to marry Demetrius (Kingsley Ben Adir.) If she doesn't comply, her father has asked the gypsy king Theseus, himself about to get married, to exact a harsh punishment. Hermia flees with Lysander, but her friend Helena (Rebecca Oldfield) is in unrequited love with Demetrius, and they follow the pair into the woods - where they get caught up in the magical games of the fairies who live there.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Custom/Practice / Almeida & Edinburgh Assembly)

Doing a few performances as part of this year's Almeida Festival (prior to an Edinburgh Fringe run next month) is new-ish theatre company Custom/Practice's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream. The night before Duke Theseus' wedding, two young couples run away to the woods. Also there are a band of workmen, rehearsing a ludicrous amateur play they intend to perform at the royal wedding. Both groups get caught up in the machinations of Oberon (Liam Mansfield) and Titania (Kemi-bo Jacobs,) King and Queen of the Fairies, and Oberon's henchman Puck (Lanre Malaolu, who coincidentally I also saw play Puck when he understudied the role at the RSC last year.) Rae McKen's production opens with a high concept of a group of schoolkids being made to read A Midsummer Night's Dream for detention, only for Puck to take on the guise of their teacher and make them inhabit the roles for real.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Filter / Lyric Hammersmith)

They do say you shouldn't choose which shows to see solely on the basis of one cast member, and it can backfire. After having happily decided to give Filter's productions a miss in future, I relented for their new A Midsummer Night's Dream as Rhys Rusbatch was in it. Unfortunately the production seems to have shed him somewhere along the tour and it arrives at the Lyric Hammersmith without him. So what would I make of the latest Shakespeare adaptation from a company whose work I've found very problematic in the past?

Things don't start well as Ed Gaughan's Peter Quince opens the show with a bit of stand-up that uses the play's royal wedding as a prompt for such unique, never-before-made observations as the fact that the Royal Family is German, and that Camilla Parker-Bowles looks a bit like a horse. Once we get going properly though, the company seem to have got over, for now at least, some of the issues I've objected to in the past. Most importantly, though still inventive and silly, I no longer got the impression that Filter were having an onstage party for their own benefit, and should the audience happen to enjoy it as well, that's incidental.