A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Barbican

In the last four hundred-odd years, since Shakespeare first wrote ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, there have been a myriad of incarnations and reincarnations. Every age injects the words with meaning pertinent to the day.

Cue the Royal Shakespeare Company’s director Eleanor Rhode, who brings to the stage possibly the deepest, funniest, most immersive, inventive, creative and multi-layered version of the play, yet.

The story is in brief: a comedy chemical romance.

Hermia is refusing to marry Demetrius because she is in love with Lysander. If she disobeys her father’s wishes, she will either be put to death or live as a single woman in a nunnery for the rest of her life. Hermia chooses option C – to run away with Lysander so they can escape the rule of Athenian law and be together. Alas, the course of true love never runs so simple. Helena, Hermia’s friend, is deeply in love with Demetrius and upon hearing of the forthcoming plan grasses her up in the hope Demetrius will love her in return.

The foursome end up in the forest where the fairies live along with their respective King and Queen – who are also having their own relationship issues. This is where things go awry. Oberon (the King of the fairies) sends his assistant elf Puck to find a magic flower that when you squeeze the juice of it into the eyes of a sleeping person, will cause them to fall in love with whoever they see on waking.

For good measure (this is a multi-layered plot), there’s also another marriage happening between Theseus, Duke of Athens and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. In celebration of the forthcoming wedding, a group of tradesmen are planning a performance of a new play which they are rehearsing in the very same fairy forest. Puck mistakenly squeezes the magic flower juice into the eyes of the wrong people who then fall in love with the wrong people – and mayhem ensues!

As complicated a plot as this sounds, on stage it makes for a play packed with fun and laughter on a level you likely haven’t seen for a long, long time.

When it comes to the stage, it is a sheer visual extravaganza of wizardry which is so simple, yet so clever, it envelops you in and you start to wonder where the stage begins and ends. The choice of the Barbican is brilliant. The brutalist curves, wide seating and panoramic views lift the performance while at the same time immerse the audience. The costumes – a combination of retro modern Shoreditch chic – are an apt choice which again feeds into the elevation of this Shakespeare play beyond the norm.

And that is the key to this production; this doesn’t feel like just another Shakespeare play. It is fresh, funny and relevant. As an aside, I even found myself thinking about chem-sex parties (of which I’d read a news story about earlier that day) and wondering to myself if Shakespeare himself had been on drugs when he’d originally written it. The scene with The Wall (yes, a character acts as a wall) is pertinent to this thought, and I had to double-check if this was part of the original or an add-on such was the hilarity of this concept (it was original).

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ maybe a well-worn play that people think they already know, such is the influence of Shakespeare at school, but I can assure you, this adaptation is unlike you’ve ever seen before. Rhode brings to the stage pure magic and stagecraft. The cast clearly take delight and joy in their performances and the banter and soul with which they perform is sure to make this a hit (again) with both young and old.

Playing until 18th January 2025, https://www.barbican.org.uk/

Reviewer: Samantha Collett

Reviewed: 10th December 2024

North West End UK Rating: