A Midsummer Night's Dream
Theatre on Kew, Kew gardens, London

LOVELY setting, less lovely production. 

With stepladder platforms on stage and maintenance trucks as props, not nearly enough is made of the verdant surrounds of Kew Gardens, and even less of its evening-time botanical atmosphere, which should perfectly suit this fairyland comedy. 

Nothing in the general atmospherics – the set, costumes, lighting, choreography or music – lends any feeling of mystery or magic to the woodland goings-on. 

Save for a bit of space for the actors to run around in, and some nice grass for the audience to sit on, the only realised benefits of staging this play at Kew come when the spotlights occasionally catch the bows of the dark, all-encompassing trees, showing what can be achieved in terms of ambience generation with a bit more thought.

On such a skew-whiff runway, the players of the Australian Shakespeare Company (some of them British for this production) seem to land correspondingly wide of the mark with performances that are generally over-animated and clownish. 

There are modifications in places to bring the language, jokes and incidentals into the modern world, all of which is fine. But at few points does director Glenn Elston allow Shakespeare’s great work to do the heavy lifting.

Instead it’s as if he’s told the cast they’ll have to try their hardest to get the best out of some rather poor material. Microphoned up to the hilt, their loud, shouty contributions, delivered as if to an audience of young children, tip the play from carnivalesque entertainment into unsubtle pantomime.

There’s also too much emphasis on the slapstick play-within-a-play, so that in total the tomfoolery of the Mechanicals relegates the story of the Athenian lovers to something of a sideshow. That wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem, except that most of the over-acting takes part in the Mechanicals’ already hammy domain.

It might be possible to rescue this production by turning the dials down a notch and allowing the Kew breeze to blow away some of its unnecessary heat. Let’s hope some modifications are made, for in its present state it fails to pass muster.

Runs until September 1. Boxoffice: kew.org