A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon

THE FAMOUS 17th century diarist and avid playgoer, Samuel Pepys, thought A Midsummer Night’s Dream the most ridiculous play he had ever seen. 

And, indeed, on the plot level — ancient Athenians mixed with fairy magic and a determined group of working-class tradesmens’ comic attempts to put on a play within the play — the dream is the bard’s silliest work. 

More discerning critics have recognised a much richer play, exploring, among other themes, the illusory psychology of love. 

In a disarming epilogue, Premi Tamang’s mischievous Puck, standing in brilliantly for the indisposed Rosie Sheehy, begs the audience to believe that they have been dreaming and “have but slumbered here.”

Given the busy energy and non-stop knock-about slapstick throughout most of Eleanor Rhode’s new production, there is little chance that anyone slumbered.

From the moment that Bally Gill’s Theseus, looking and acting like an even more ineffectual Rishi Sunak, and defeated Amazonian Queen, Sarine Saba, his bride to be, introduce us to this make-believe world, hung with a vast assortment of huge white puff balls, we sense that this is to be a night where anything goes.

When the pair transmute into an argumentative Oberon and Titania, fairy king and queen of the dream woodland world in which four young frustrated lovers tangle and the Rude Mechanicals gather to perform their dramatic epic, Shakespeare’s language gives way to frenetic action and impressively colourful visual effects.

From a uniformly excellent cast, Mathew Baynton’s Bottom — by far the thinnest I have seen and a kind of faux-Olivier — steals the hilarious final scene, the Pyramus and Thisbe comi-tragedy. 

The creative team, particularly the work of Illusion Director, John Bullied, and Composer Will Gregory, have produced a show which, if it does not explore the significance of dreams as the programme essays suggest, will delight audiences and the box office equally.

Runs until March 30. Box office: 01789 331 111, rsc.org.uk