Next Time, I'm Standing.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre

My theatre buddy and I (last show ‘Totoro’, next one ‘Six’) arrived expecting Shakespeare.  We left feeling like we’d been to a faerie rave.

In Nicholas Hytner’s immersive revival at the Bridge Theatre, the forest isn’t just enchanted, it’s alive, anarchic, and utterly intoxicating.  From our seats we were pulled into a glitter-strewn celebration of love, power, and chaos.  

The staging is a marvel.  Stage platforms rise and fall like enchanted terrain, beds spin, silks drop from above.  Puck - all sinew, sass, and aerial menace - snarls “Move, you’re in the way” with a wink to audience members being expertly ushered around the pit by slick stagehands.  The faeries pout and pose and seemingly audition for Cabaret. It’s a visual feast that never sits still - and nor should it.

In keeping with tradition, the cast doubles as Athenian royals and fairy monarchs and with Hytner’s switching of Oberon and Titania’s roles new life is breathed into this play.  Titania is given the agency and Puck as her partner-in-mischief.  With that Hippolyta’s silent entrapment gives way to Titania’s unleashed vengeance.  A gaze shared with the threatened Hermia as Hippolyta is wheeled off in her box says everything. There’s a chance at real political charge beneath the glitter - but then, this is Midsummer and Shakespeare goes off in another direction.

And so Oberon becomes the enchanted fool, lusting after a brilliantly grotesque Bottom, all karaoke swagger and donkey ears.  This inversion is interesting and overdue and yet when Oberon is draped over Bottom in bed (and bath), the laughter says something too. Hytner dares us to question what we’re finding funny.  Queering Oberon is interesting - but when played purely for (camp) laughs, it risks reducing queerness to a punchline.  Titania’s dominance feels feminist.  Oberon’s queering?  A bit too safe.

The lovers are a riot: ridiculous, kinetic, with their chaos peppered by sharp modern asides - particularly from Hermia, who seems most attuned to the audience’s howls. One moment niggled: when the two male lovers kissed, it drew audible gasps and laughter. When the women kissed, it passed unremarked - even watched, delightedly, by the boys.  The audience (and perhaps the production) still seems more at ease with queer women as titillation than queer men as comedy.  A little less glee, and a little more care, could make the subversion sharper.

The Mechanicals nearly steal the show. Their play-within-a-play is gloriously daft, packed with gags and one-liners, “Unlock thy calendar” deserving its own curtain call. They’re classic crowd-pleasers, led by a wonderfully long-suffering adult educationist just trying to get the job done. I adored this reluctant gang; their choreographed physicality at the start of the final performance was gloriously reminiscent of my (past life, Drama teacher) GCSE productions. But as with much in this Dream, a little goes a long way - and Bottom’s death scene, for me, tipped into too much.

Don’t get me wrong - I loved it.  I really did.  Theatre is meant to take risks - and a production so joyous and kinetic is a gift.  It’s smart, messy, generous, and completely alive.  It’s Midsummer. It’s Madness.  It’s exactly the kind of anarchic disruption Shakespeare deserves.

The final word goes to my young niece, “Next time, I’m standing.”