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.
