Midsummer is perfect for a Night outdoors
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Shakespeare’s Globe Verdict: Three-parts panto ★★★✩✩ Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre Verdict: Dark magic ★★★★✩ WE’RE spoilt for choice when it comes to productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with three of them in London alone.
But it’s outdoor theatre that comes into its own, weather allowing, in the summer.
You start with the gathering of Athenian nobles while it’s light, and as darkness falls you enter the enchanted world of fairies in the forest and the anarchy of dreams.
It’s the ideal play, then, for Shakespeare’s Globe and the Open Air Theatre. But these are very different productions (though at both the audience has a ball).
Sean Holmes’s production at the Globe is as close as you’ll get to Shakespeare as panto. Every double entendre is exploited, no chance of bump and grind missed, the opportunities for gender swapping joyfully exploited. It’s a riot of colour and filthy fun, and Jocelyn Jee Esien is a bouncy Bottom dressed as a pinata — but Shakespeare gets lost on the way.
It’s not clear why Peter Bourke’s Theseus is a pink parody of a South American generalissimo, when he needs authority. Why is Titania’s bower a recycling bin? Why do all the characters get a go at playing Puck? And why do we struggle to hear the words? With planes overhead you need decent diction and terrific projection.
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre works its magic for Dominic Hill’s production. But it has a dark side. The changeling child is the creepiest doll you’ve ever seen, Rachael Canning’s big arachnid fairies are the stuff of nightmares, Kieran Hill’s Theseus is a thug and Myra McFadyen sits on Oberon’s knee like a sinister Scottish ventriloquist’s doll.
Yet it’s joyous stuff. Michael Elcock is a dishy Lysander. As for Gareth Snook’s Welsh take on the man nervously in charge of the tradesmen actors, it’s funny even before he opens his mouth.
You can follow the plot and hear the words. Hooray.