A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bridge Theatre
Upon entering the Bridge Theatre’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one – if granted the mixed blessing of a seated position – is greeted with a disorienting statement of intent. In place of a stage is a crowd of onlookers congealing below, many brandishing drinks and mobile phones to snap photos of Titania, Queen of the Fairies (Susannah Fielding), looming over all from a glass case. From a distanced vantage (sacrificing some level of immersion in exchange for a significant subtraction in strain on the legs), it takes a moment to discern what is part of the show and what isn’t, though the question naturally proves redundant. Throughout the night, security intervenes to part the sea of onlookers as differing stages rise up from the ground, and security will remain present at various junctures, eyes anxiously fixed on David Moorst’s puckish Robin Goodfellow as he contorts and swings over the heads of the crowd. When actors disembark from the stage (or from high above it), they must pass through the onlookers to do it, and naturally, said crowd’s participation when the motley crew of theatre geeks led by Bottom (Emmanuel Akwafo) takes charge is non-negotiable.
If one is tempted to continue expounding on this Midsummer Night’s inventive technical elements and crowd work, this may stand as something of a mark against it. When attention is so persistently drawn away from Shakespeare’s bawdy romantic farce in favour of admiring this staging’s strenuous construction, the result can create greater distance from the tale than you-are-there immediacy, and the laughs appear to be taking a backseat too. Not unlike in Jamie Lloyd’s recent disco-themed Much Ado About Nothing, the night’s richest pleasures are the simplest, and little concerned with pyrotechnics of any kind.
As the mutually infatuated Hermia and Lysander (Nina Cassells and Divesh Subaskaran, respectively) and Demetrius and Helena (Paul Adefeya and Lily Simpkiss) find their loves torn asunder when the two men are bewitched to fall for the other’s true love, the results are fleet and funny. This is in no small part due to Subaskaran and Adefeya’s un-winking commitment to brainlessly besotted ardour, echoed in fairy king Oberon (JJ Field)’s delightful renouncement of all courtly dignity in favour of dewy-eyed romancing of the newly ass-headed (in the quite literal sense) Bottom. It’s all so pristinely, purely silly that the self-conscious anachronisms that recur elsewhere (the almost customary cultural references, with Scarface, Titanic and The Wizard of Oz invoked in quick succession; inevitable pop needledrops) are thrown into less welcome relief. When a cast sparkles as this one does, there need be only so many bells and whistles attached to the core attraction.
Still, this is the rare confection that only gains in energy as it goes, and as it settles into a winsome comic groove, it seems that no flight of whimsical fancy can seem very strained with so barmy a play to match. As Oberon and Bottom’s courtship plays out as a karaoke-fuelled debauch to remember, it feels as though the play has come by its chaos honestly. The highly touted “immersion” effect becomes more than a gimmick through sheer chutzpah, and for the hard-to-fabricate effusiveness of the crowd, who are able to join the players in revelling come the night’s end, all dancing together on the same ground.
Ultimately, this Midsummer Night’s Dream overcomes its initially distracting construction to deliver a high-energy, nimbly performed farce, ably balancing its self-consciously modern outrageousness with more straightforward pleasures. By the end, the crowd that has been so intimately involved from the start feels like an essential ingredient to complete the celebratory, infectiously good-natured whole.
Thomas Messner
Photos: Manuel Harlan
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is at Bridge Theatre from 31st May until 20th August 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
RSS