Directors of Shakespeare’s comedy of aristocrats, artisans and sprites getting confused in a wood often seem influenced by one title word. Midsummer stagings are light and magical, Night shows rather darker. Eleanor Rhode’s RSC revival is driven by Dream, crucially incorporating the sub-categories of nightmare and erotic fantasy, including the rather niche reverie of sex with a donkey.
Characters mash, worlds invert, flames burst from fingers, people move backwards (inflecting Tenet and Christopher Nolan’s dreamscape movie Inception), and surreal moments include one that resembles an explosion in a children’s indoor play pit.
Bally Gill’s charismatic doubling of Athenian Duke Theseus and faery king Oberon – matched by Sirine Saba’s sparky pairing of Hippolyta and faery queen Titania – strongly suggest that what we are seeing in the wood scenes is the nocturnal consequence of a big Greek pre-wedding dinner. In this reading, the elf Puck – athletically and musically played by Premi Tamang, replacing Rosie Sheehy, indisposed on press night – becomes a Freudian blurring of daughters, lovers and childhood fairytales.
The non-dream scenes are also strikingly earthy. In the workers’ play-within-the-play, Shakespeare, in casting someone as a Wall, enjoys joking about what the “hole” in such a barrier might be, but this production doubles down on the entendre. Emily Cundick’s Snout / Wall and Mathew Baynton’s Bottom / Pyramus will have required the ingenuity of the credited intimacy directors.
Baynton, due to his roles in the great TV comedies Ghosts and Horrible Histories, will draw younger and school audiences. They are very lucky to see a performer able to make Shakespeare’s artisan comedy – frequently laborious now – genuinely funny. Via parodic voices (including past RSC acting styles), silly walks and too-loud outfits, he reaches an uproariously gory Pyramus death scene, stretching every part of his body including his tongue.
Beneath the comedy, there is also the cruelty of a plot in which couples are tricked together or apart by a “love juice”. Under its influence, Ryan Hutton’s laddish Lysander kisses his erstwhile partner, Dawn Sievewright’s sarky Hermia, and recoils and retches as if he has just French-kissed a skunk.
Due to the GCSE syllabus and its crowd-pleasing title, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most performed Shakespeare plays. But this version consistently feels fresh, helped by Helen Monks’s Rita (in the original Peter) Quince, a more deluded amateur theatrical than Lynda Snell in The Archers, and Boadicea Ricketts’ bold proud Helena.
A production’s panache is easily attributed to a director but this feels clearly a team effort, with Lucy Osborne’s design, John Bulleid’s illusions, Matt Daw’s lighting and Pete Malkin’s sound also excelling in the dazzling inception. It feels fair to see it again, when the unfortunate Ms Sheehy is restored, but to do so will be a late winter dream.
At Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 30 March
