A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

A first visit to The Bridge Theatre in London has changed my mind about going to see Shakespeare. As a man of, shall we say, a certain age I’ve seen a lot of the bard’s works, not everything I grant you, but all of the better known plays and a few of the lesser performed works. And I’ve seen some of them more than once, frankly when once could well have been enough. I’ve seen startlingly good productions and desperately bad ones too. I’ve been enthralled, excited, charmed and bored to almost death. I’ve seen spartan productions and lavish ones, sensational ones and silly, traditional and absurd re-imaginings… what I’m saying is that maybe I have had my fill.

Then along comes a chance to see Nicholas Hytner’s much feted 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So off I set, full of expectations and ready to be amazed, after all, I do enter a theatre with an open mind, well usually.

The Bridge is stunning and easy to access with a huge and comfortable foyer and very friendly and helpful staff. We were there for a matinee and immediately spotted that there were at least two large school parties in. Now I think schools should be going to as much theatre as possible, I know that as a teenager I went on many school trips and it gave birth to my love of theatre. But in recent years I fear that the age of the mobile phone has hampered the experience for the young. How I wish that the school curriculum included lessons in how to be an audience member.

On this occasion I was delighted to see that a very large number of young people not only behaved themselves but became fully absorbed by the experience, totally getting the concept of an immersive performance and one has to hope entering into a lifelong love of live theatre. Producers need to acknowledge that if we are to have a future for British theatre we need to grow that future audience and this production does just that.

Photo: Manuel Harlan

So on to the play, after all the play is the thing. This is the most delightfully engaging production I have ever seen, filled with humour and delight, playing artfully with the original script to give it a contemporary relevance. It is a stunningly visual experience, totally immersive, how I wished that I was young enough and mobile enough to have joined the throng in the standing arena as they were gently moved around the action, rising platforms and shifting scenery. The team of stage hands are as carefully choreographed as the performers for this, shepherding hundreds of people with unobtrusive ease and moving the set around with seamless precision.

Hytner’s vision is expansive, whilst the Athenian mortals are set in the present, the gods and fairies are fantastical, deliciously dressed by designer Christina Cunningham is a punk fairyland manner. Bunny Christies setting is for the contemporary moments plain but once in dreamland the forest is a magical world of iron bedsteads and mattresses in which the enchanted leap and wander.

Of course we all want fairies to fly and fly they do, here using circus skills and silks they float and spin above the action, sometimes with wild abandon and then in precisely coordinated choreography. It is truly captivating.

David Moorst, Photo: Manuel Harlan

Puck, so often depicted as cloyingly cute is here played by David Moorst with truly wicked intent, a broad northern accent, sharp features and incredible acrobatic skills and energy as he totally invests in and infests the whole.

JJ Feild is suavely handsome as Theseus, dignified and aloof but as Oberon he is wonderfully biddable and even vulnerable and the twists in the scripting have him involved in some of the funniest moments.

Susannah Fielding, Photo: Manuel Harlan

Susannah Fielding makes a marvellously imperious Hippolyta, still and all seeing then as Titania she becomes deliciously wicked and mischeivious, elegantly reserved but twinklingly naughty. Her moments admonishing Puck are a delight.

The Lovers are played with a real sense of the 21st century, their confused and complicated relationships feel very real and their grounded energy, they do not get to fly, is boundless, charging around the space with alarming physicality especially when they get to fight, beautifully managed action from fight director Kate Waters.

The crude mechanicals are charmingly funny as they quibble over their parts and when  they finally get to play their roles at the ending of the whole it is the most hysterical representation of the very worst kind of modern theatre, interspersed with genuine silliness and asides.

JJ Feild and Emmanuel Akwafo, Photo: Manuel Harlan

Finally we get to Bottom, a role that has the funniest moments and lines in any production of this play but here, in the hands, body and mouth of Emmanuel Akwafo it reaches new heights. This is one big bouncing ball of energy and mirth and in this twisty production he is given the opportunity to truly excel. From his eager desire to play every part, from Pyramus to the lion, to braying ass and besotted lover he makes the very most of every moment on that stage. It is a magical performance in every sense.

This is Shakespeare at its very best, as it should be seen, and, that horde of youngsters down in the arena became so totally engaged that no doubt some of them at least will have left with a new found interest in the bard.

Andrew Kay

17 July

The Bridge Theatre, London

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