A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Globe review ★★★★★

Shakespeare’s Athens-set play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, categorically, a comedy. After some pranks from the fairy king Oberon and his mischievous sidekick Puck, and some resulting buffoonery on the part of their victims – a gaggle of players rehearsing their latest drama and four young Athenians figuring out their feelings for one another – all ends happily with multiple weddings, even if there was some coercion along the way. ‘But not so fast!,’ seems to be the message of director Elle While’s production, which surfaces the play’s dark undertones and elongates its moments of wickedness to remind us what’s at stake.

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It’s this way from the get-go: there’s no hint of irony or attempt to soften Egeus’s early threat to his daughter Hermia that she’ll be put to death should she fail to marry his chosen suitor Demetrius rather than her lover Lysander. The gender-blind cast sees Vinnie Heaven play an especially vicious Demetrius, cruelly mocking the infatuated Helena (a wild-eyed Isobel Thom, of I, Joan acclaim) and roughly pushing her to the floor. Under the charms of Puck, Sam Crerar’s Lysander is even worse to Francesca Mills’ Hermia. Mills, who commandeers the stage with aplomb, has a form of dwarfism, which makes Lysander’s ableist slurs all the more abhorrent – and While has Crerar luxuriate in them, eliciting gasps from the press-night audience.

Francesca Mills as Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe. Photo: Helen Murray

It’s the witchcraft, though, that really tips While’s production into unusually sinister territory. With the help of magic consultant John Bulleid, the fairies conjure flowers and other potion ingredients out of thin air. When the spells are cast, composer James Maloney has his band – a brass outfit who largely supply upbeat interludes between scenes – play eerie, discordant shrieks, reinforcing the message that this is dark magic rather than a bit of light tomfoolery.

Never is this more apparent than through the presence of Globe boss Michelle Terry’s Puck. Sour, sarcastic and looking like the Grinch who stole Christmas with a masked green face and crown of twigs, she seems to revel in the discomfort she causes, screaming back at a frightened Hermia and swaggering off stage as confusion erupts among the waking lovers. She and Jack Laskey’s deadpan Oberon are like a pair of rascals on the rebound, determined to cause chaos to uproot Marianne Oldham’s punky fairy queen Titania.

Jack Laskey as Oberon and Michelle Terry as Puck. Photo: Helen Murray

Wills’s design is largely stripped back, save for shimmering, other-worldly roots snaking around the stage’s columns. Takis’s costumes offer a sparkly, playful riff on period courtly attire, with leaves and flowers draped over the fairies’ clothing in a nod to their forest dwellings.

Despite the talent bringing them to life, the scenes with the players tend to drag. They’re a tedious bunch as Shakespearean characters go, but it seems inspiration ran out before their direction here. Still, Rebecca Root is a fittingly bumbling Quince, and Mariah Gale brings most of the show’s humour as Bottom, showing off uncannily life-like donkey movements on her transformation.

Shakespeare was aware his play might unsettle, leaving Puck to deliver some final words excusing its offending. With deft appreciation of this, While’s production ensures we gasp and wince as often as we laugh.