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: Glasgow Girls

Cora Bissett, who starred in David Greig's Midsummer, is wearing her director's hat for her latest collaboration with Greig, which approaches political theatre in a way that's seldom seen. Glasgow Girls is a lively musical based on the true - and ongoing - story of a campaign against the deportation of asylum seekers' children. In 1999, empty flats in Glasgow were deemed a suitable place to house asylum seekers from Kosovo, Iraq, the Congo and elsewhere. Over the years the families settled into their new home and, despite the inevitable "they come here, steal our jobs" minority, were mostly accepted into the community. When the Home Office starts forcibly deporting families whose status has, almost arbitrarily, been changed to "safe," six teenage girls spearhead a campaign to protect the children, many of whom know no other home.