A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Shakespeare’s Globe, until September 11. Tickets: 020 7401 9919

TALK about a mission statement. Emma Rice’s debut production as

The Globe’s new artistic director is not so much a declaration of intent as a theatrical tsunami. And while this is only her second stab at Shakespeare, it is a confident production of a play that can suffer from over-familiarity.

The stage is festooned with giant white globes and wafting green tubes and dressed in orange marigolds as if for an Indian wedding. It’s not the first time Shakespeare has been invested with Indian spice but with nods to “Hoxton hipsters” this is closer to Brick Lane than Bollywood.

The lovers and courtiers are in modern dress and the fairies are Elizabethan punks straight out of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. The multicultural mash-up is enhanced by sexual transitioning: Helena becomes Helenus, a gay man in love with Demetrius, and the all-femalebar-one Rude Mechanicals are supposedly off-duty Globe staff. Sounds awful but it works well.

The inclusion of David Bowie and George Formby songs and Elizabethan poetry set to music (John Donne’s To His Mistress Going To Bed is an apt choice) extends the running time to three hours. But such is the flurry of activity and music led by female sitarist (Sheema Mukherjee) that it rarely drags.

Cabaret singer Meow Meow brings an unusual sexuality to Titania, fearlessly descending on wires and hilariously tripping over her tights in her urgent seduction scene. When doubling as Hippolyta, she affects a Russian accent to go with her blingy costume. Anjana Vasan is a fab Hermia, totally modern but speaking the verse as if born to it. And Ankur Bahl is extraordinarily affecting as the rejected gay lover Helenus. But Katy Owen’s Puck is a mini-Pan on Ritalin. If Rice could get her to inject variation into her delivery, her Puck would be engagingly naughty instead of unendurably irritating.

More earthy than ethereal, it cedes magic for robust joy and big-hearted humour. A small price to pay I think.