A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Leeds Playhouse
⭑⭑⭑⭑☆
 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is one of the nation’s favourite comedies. In this Headlong and Shakespeare’s Globe co-production, however, the play has been reimaged as something altogether darker.

The broad plot remains the same: four young Athenians flee to a magical forest, where fairies meddle with their love lives to chaotically comic effect. Yet in reframing what it means to dream, and who has the privilege of doing so, it taps into tragic themes that Shakespeare only skirts over.

This tonal shift is signalled early though the costume choices for the fairies. Usually portrayed as mischievous and endearing, the trickster Puck (Sergo Vares) is here dressed in black tutu and deconstructed tailcoat. His first appearance — perched on a banqueting table, eating a banana in silence — is equal parts provocation and menace. 

Such moments typify the production’s willingness to take PG-related liberties under director Holly Race Roughan. These include chef and amateur actor Bottom (Danny Kirrane) sniffing cocaine, and Lysander (David Olaniregun) and Demetrius (Lou Jackson) ripping off their shirts as they vie for the love of Helena (Tara Tijani). The liberal reimagining also incorporates unexpected, and at times context-free piano renditions of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy and Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

By staging the play in winter, Race Roughan also teases out parallels between the original text and the climate crisis. Staged in Max Johns’ stark white set — part Stanley Kubrick; part Narnia 2.0 — the seasons are out of sync as a result of a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies (Michael Marcus and Hedydd Dylan, in Kate Bush-esque black lace skirt).

The belly laughs come thick and fast, with Kirrane deserving special mention. But in unpicking some of the play’s implicit tragedies, the production team has made some bold choices that force the audience to re-examine a familiar comedy.

Runs at Leeds Playhouse until February 28, then on tour until March 28. Box office: (0113) 213-7700, leedsplayhouse.org.uk.