Globe/Headlong Productions: A Midsummer Night time’s Dream, by William Shakespeare. Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat, co-directors; Max Johns, designer; Richie Hart, musical director; Nicola T Chang, composer & sound designer; with Hedydd Dylan (Hippolyta/Tatania); Pria Kalso (Flute, Baby); Michael Marcus (Oberon/Theseus); Tiwa Lade (Hermia/Mustardseed); Sergo Vares (Puck); David Olaniregun (Lysander/Moth). Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, December 3, 2025; continues till January 31, 2026. Tickets here.
A forbidding, clinically white stage shouldn’t be what comes naturally to thoughts for the setting of A Midsummer Night time’s Dream, a minimum of not for such intimately heat venue because the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
A nod to Peter Brook’s iconic white field RSC manufacturing? Maybe, and in multiple manner. Like that staging, this co-production between the Globe and Headlong doesn’t shrink back from the darker corners of the play.
Titania’s ‘The seasons alter’, as she describes the affect of her quarrel with Oberon, turns into a cue for the wintry setting. This system notes’ deduction from right here to our present local weather disaster looks as if a stretch too far. Not way more convincing is the good weight the manufacturing offers to the changeling little one (usually a boy however right here a woman, portrayed by Pria Kalso, additionally doubling as Flute). As soon as once more Varsha Panjawi’s notes relating this minor subplot to crimes of coloniality really feel like gratuitous level making. The kid turns into the center of the battle between the 2 chief {couples}, Hippolyta/Titania (performed by a darkly menacing Hedydd Dylan) and Theseus/Oberon (given alarming power by Michael Marcus). Love is changed by a sado-masochist adverse vitality that ultimately unravels your entire basis of authority.
Performances
The agent of this destruction is not any apart from Puck. As portrayed by the imposing Estonian Sergo Vares, he’s a sinister half Matthew-Bourne-like swan, half scary white-faced clown, whose each look is accompanied by an eerie cluster contained in the piano, usually to the existential discomfort of Backside.
Backside, given humanity and pathos by the larger-than-life Danny Kirrane, goes from swearing to drawing and snorting his traces, with some realizing asides to the viewers.
Between these two extremities come the lovers, portrayed with youthful vitality and enthusiasm — Lou Jackson’s Demetrius is a stand-out efficiency in its infectious sexual stress. All of them double as fairies, wearing black tutus, and infrequently carrying pagan-style animal masks, contributing to the feverish nightmare that unfolds.
Surprisingly Backside’s transformation doesn’t include ass ears; Puck violently replaces his sneakers by makeshift hooves. Elsewhere, Jack Humphrey seamlessly commutes between Peter Quince and Egeus, suggesting the affinity between the characters.
Shuffling Scenes
As has change into ordinary now, administrators Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat shuffle scenes, redistribute elements of speeches, and add a sprinkling of texts different performs — together with ‘Perchance to Dream’ in golden letters excessive above the stage.
The actors’ skills are totally explored as David Olaniregun (Lysander) and Lou Jackson take turns on the piano, with snatches of pop songs. Elsewhere, music composed by Nicola T. Chang and directed by Richie Hart on the piano and guitar discretely highlights adjustments of moods, underlines magical moments, and stirs the chaotic environment of preparation of the dinner events that open and shut the manufacturing.
Last Ideas
Lengthy gone are the times when Shakespeare’s Globe was a refuge from radicalised and productions. The ‘Unique Practices’ dream of the late Claire Van Kampen and Sir Mark Rylance has been step by step changed by the widespread observe of confronting and taking part in with viewers’s expectations.
The issue comes when there may be little left that may shock the viewers. The answer on this manufacturing, a literal derivation of Chekhov’s gun as Theseus shoots Backside, felt merely gratuitous and unconvincing.
I left feeling that provocation may need lastly surpassed poetry.
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Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI World Fellow on the Universities of Toronto and King’s Faculty London engaged on Ladies and Western Artwork Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and College of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow on the College of Huddersfield. She is the writer of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and recurrently seems in live shows as a pianist. She is an everyday broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, Worldwide Piano, and Bachtrack, together with Ludwig Van.
