MSND – Chelsea Theatre, London

Writers: Intermission Youth Theatre, based on the play by William Shakespeare

Director: Darren Raymond

When you think about it, a play about teens falling in and out of love while under the influence of drugs is about as contemporary as it gets, even when it’s written by Shakespeare. And okay, there are other themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream which don’t lend themselves quite so starkly to a youth theatre’s reimagination, but that can’t stop MSND from being a highly enjoyable take on the classic.

Intermission Youth Theatre’s production, developed through a series of workshops with its young company to develop a story that reflects some of their own hardships and struggles, starts off with young parent Oberon (Judah Meade) at odds with his daughter’s mother, Titania (Lylas Flora) over the amount of time he spends with Maryse Baya’s Puck.

As a release, both Oberon and Puck try new street drug MSND, sending them on a trip in which they can see fairies, and which causes their language to switch from modern slang to Shakespearean metre. As the drug spreads throughout the community, more and more people are drawn into the world, and for various reasons head to the Playground, an overgrown place with a bad rep but no supervision.

In this version, Lysander and Demetrius are part of a group of boys who are betting with each other over who will lose their virginity first, allocating their targets by drawing names out of a hat. Two of the girls they pursue are the headstrong Hermia (Nyah T Campbell) and Valerie Olweny’s Helena, who’s already seen as the butt of the joke by the boys.

And it is this strand of Shakespeare’s work that understandably, and most effectively, receives the greatest focus. Kwadwo Kwateng is especially impressive as Lysander: while his dogged pursuit of Campbell’s Hermia with little regard or respect for her wishes are played for laughs, the toxicity of the attitude he and his peers show towards women is clearly laid out and never condoned for long.

Olweny, meanwhile, turns Helena into a tragic figure, clearly struggling with caring for her addict mother but determined to retain her self-respect and not let the boys’ ridiculous behaviour demean her.

No Midsummer Night’s Dream would be anything without its mechanicals, of course. Here, they are a group of school students rehearsing for their school’s end-of-term talent show. Li Ikoku-Smith brings a laconic, droll demeanour to Bottom, who has ambitions to close the show with a killer stand-up routine but can’t even get through a knock-knock joke without messing it up.

Ikoku-Smith has such a natural sense of comedy about him that his classmates’ constant assertions that he is not funny become the least believable parts of the whole fantasy. He can handle drama, too, with a couple of emotional scenes with a father (Genome Allen-Dunkley) who couldn’t be less supportive.

There are times where the magic and whimsical fantasy of the original work don’t quite fit into the contemporary story Intermission’s cast and creatives have constructed. But by the end that matters little: we have life lessons about the importance of having dreams, and the need to not live in one’s personal dreamland for too long.

Listening to the cast members of MSND in a post show Q&A, it’s apparent the influence that Intermission Youth Theatre has had on their lives. That is apparent in the play as well: its impact can well be described as magical.

Continues until 3 December 2022