A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 17 August 2019

Nicholas Hytner directs Oliver Chris as Oberon and Theseus and Gwendoline Christie as Titania and Hippolyta in an inventive restaging of this perennially favourite play, with David Moorst as Puck and Hammed Animashaun as Bottom. The production is designed by Bunny Christie.

As with last year's production of Julius Caesar (reviewed on both 27 January and 27 March 2018) the Bridge has been transformed into a theatre in the round with a central pit area where audience members can stand and be moved around by stewards as various parts of the floor rise to become acting spaces. There is no need for a crowd as such in this play, so there is less immediate involvement than in the other play, but the mere presence of so many people 'in the way' underscores the confusions the mere mortals undergo as they enter the forest outside Athens.

Theseus is soberly suited, and firmly authoritarian, while Hippolyta, in grey, is encased in a perspex box to begin with, unable to intervene in the cruel scene in which her captor supports the overbearing Egeus in his marriage plans for Hermia. The Athenian youngsters also dress smartly, though they become increasingly bedraggled as their night in the forest unravels. The Rude Mechanicals are in jump suits, as befits their lower social status.

In the meantime the fairies are far more flamboyant, and Puck wild and tattooed with a mischievous and distinctly earthy chuckle. In his first scene, encountering a rival fairy, Theseus and Hippolyta appear to be dreaming the encounter, until they rise from their beds and cast off their nightwear to reveal themselves splendidly as Oberon and Titania.

The fateful quarrel over the Indian changeling boy here takes an unexpected twist, as Titania begs the boy from Oberon, a complete reversal of the written text. From this it follows that Puck takes orders from Titania, and it is Oberon who is made obsessed with Bottom. The scenes between Oliver Chris and Hammed Animashaun are extremely funny, and then at the end there is a curious air of puzzlement about Theseus as he sees Bottom as Pyramus. It's an audacious move, but because it is made whole-heartedly, and in keeping with the riotous misrule of the fairy world, it is completely convincing.

As for the Pyramus and Thisbe play itself, this has to be one of the funniest I have seen, Pyramus's death scene being only the most outrageous part of it. There are wonderful ad-libs from the caustic courtiers watching it, especially from Theseus himself, while Bottom adds to the hilarity by reminding his fellow mechanicals that they must adapt their acting style as they are playing in the round. Ad-libs are perhaps the order of the day with this play - they were used to good effect, but quite differently, in the current Globe production (reviewed on 1 August 2019); here Puck is very rude about some audience members as he moves through the crowd, while Bottom seizes a mobile phone from the crowd (they need a calendar to check the moon's condition at Midsummer) and he and his colleagues snigger over the presumed downloads.

I need not have been wary of seeing two productions of the play within sixteen days; each had its high points, and yet on balance I think I had more complete enjoyment out of this version.