Not intimidated by the onslaught of 'Midsummer Night’s Dreams' across the country (talk about a race to the Bottom), director Simon Evans has taken a more oblique approach to the play: 17 parts are played by seven actors, there’s no set, no lights, barely any costume. This is a 'Dream' we have to weave in our imaginations.
And it’s not one for the purists. People got riled enough at Emma Rice’s Globe production of the Shakespeare classic just because it had women in it; this one gets rid of most of the text. 'Dream' already has a play within the play. Evans has added another layer, with a framing narrative in which the actors plays exaggerated versions of themselves putting on a production of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'. Freddie Fox saunters on, a faux-arrogant diva trying to claim all the big parts because he’s part of the Fox dynasty.
Throughout the show traces of this ‘reality’ bleed into the performance as backstage politics infect action on stage. The actors dart in and out of the narrative, calling each other by their real names and addressing the audience directly – even co-opting punters into being props. It’s sort of clever, but a bit smug too, and certainly not a 'Dream' for people who haven’t seen it before.
What it focuses on is the power of imagination in theatre. Actors keep telling us, in irritatingly mystical and pseudo-poetic tones, to ‘imagine a tree’ or ‘imagine a leaf’ in the empty traverse stage. A trite message, but no less profound.
The show builds, through plenty of slapstick, to a riotous climax as the cast flit exhaustingly between characters. It’s almost completely overshadowed by Freddie Fox making an ass of himself – almost literally: his knuckles become hooves, his teeth buck, and an arm dangling between his legs represents his Bottom’s generous endowment. It’s performed with joyously brash, sweaty energy.
Somewhere between those two cliches - ‘it was all a dream’ and ‘play-within-play’ – lies this production, a dance between what's real and what's not, what's acted and what isn’t, deliberately and gleefully desecrating a classic for its own anarchic ends.