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. Ala...