If all of Shakespeare’s performs supply scope for reinvention, mentioned Dominic Maxwell in The Times, his “wonky comedy” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” appears positively to cry out to administrators: “Do something new to me!” As ever, summer time is bringing a bunch of latest “Dreams” throughout the nation, and kicking off proceedings are two massive productions – in Birmingham and at Shakespeare’s Globe in London – that foreground enjoyable and silliness.
The former, from the Birmingham Rep’s new creative director Joe Murphy and his deputy Madeleine Kludje, is a “larky”, panto-like “spectacle that feasts on popular culture, drag, local accents, crowd-play and newly added quips. It sets out to be fun, and it really is”.
Designed with Birmingham’s younger, multicultural inhabitants in thoughts, this “lively, progressive” tackle the “well-worn classic” has the texture of a “club night”, mentioned Alison Brinkworth on WhatsOnStage. It includes a extremely camp Puck (Adam Carver, aka cabaret artiste Fatt Butcher), neon-pink lighting, gender reversals, queer romances, and pop hits together with Queen’s “A Kind of Magic”. But though it opens with Hippolyta preaching about local weather change, it is rather “faithful to the Bard’s script and language”.
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At the Globe, Emily Lim has produced a “crowd-pleasing” staging with an identical “kick-off-your-shoes-and-join-the-party kind of vibe”, mentioned Theo Bosanquet on the same website. In considered one of a number of “ingenious little twists”, Puck unintentionally squirts love potion into his personal eye, and falls for an unsuspecting member of the viewers.
Michael Grady-Hall is an “inspired” Puck, mentioned Miriam Gillinson in The Guardian. “More court jester than fairy, he spends much of the show joking with the crowd, ad-libbing with exquisite timing and pelting everyone with bubbles.”
With “effervescent comic performances”, gloriously extravagant costumes, an enthralling set and hearty folks music by Jim Fortune, “this is the rarest of things: a ‘Dream’ the whole family can enjoy. Just cover the kids’ eyes for the slightly naughtier bits.”
Birmingham Rep to 24 May, Shakespeare’s Globe, London to 29 August