Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Cecilie Fray
Shakespeare’s quintessential summer play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its forests and fairies, is perfect for performing outside. A flock of parakeets screeching overhead feels like part of the action. The troupe of unsettling faerie creatures, who serve as a kind of chorus, hiss into the wind and rustle in the leaves as if they were part of the garden. This effect is enhanced by staging the play in the round so that actors appear from all sides, through flowering paths and branches. Midnight Circle Productions are touring this year’s midsummer madness around atmospheric venues in Kent, Essex, London and Norwich.
The production aims to lean into the Dream’s darker, gothic elements, even changing the title to A Midsummer Nightmare. The renaming is slightly misleading; this is an innovative but largely faithful version of Shakespeare’s original script. It has an unorthodox start: fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania, played with elegant gravitas by Chloe Orrock and Kennedy Jopson respectively, process onto the stage. Their uncanny entourage conjures up the openings of several other plays – Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice – and the king and queen dismiss each one as if switching supernatural channels until the Dream/Nightmare suddenly begins.
The action opens as the Athenian Duke Theseus prepares to wed the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. And young Hermia, poignantly played by Niamh Handley-Vaughan, is told she must marry against her will, become a nun, or die. She decides to run away instead with her chosen beau and is followed into the forest by two other young mismatched lovers. Add in a host of mischievous fairies, and the night’s adventures will get complicated.
Each member of the young ensemble cast plays at least two different roles and often more, switching in an instant from growling goblin to impassioned suitor to amateur-theatrical workman. Nadia Lamin is spirited as Helena and the theatrical Lion and matched in intensity by Charlie Macrae-Tod, who is a churlish and then amusingly-lovestruck Demetrius as well as a hilarious Scottish Flute/Thisbe. Jed McLoughlin is an amiable Bottom the Weaver, terrified at first by Titania’s overtures, but soon comfortable in his new life. Sam Bird as Puck has an unsettling blend of unearthliness and gleeful scorn.
One of the most effective nightmare elements, skilfully directed by Cecilie Fray, is Hermia’s dream that “a serpent ate my heart away”. In many productions, it’s a throw-away line. Here, Hermia is menaced by a multi-headed snake that writhes into grinning human forms and terrifies her. Movement director Dan Watson has helped create an otherworldly atmosphere through the eerie physicality of the goblin crew. The image recalls the “spotted snakes with double tongue” from the fairies’ song, which is more of a chant here, with percussive sticks, little bells, and a ukulele as accompaniment. Some of the most haunting moments are the excellent saxophone solos from Miles Blanch, who is Musical Director for the company as well as acting the bumbling play-within-a-play director Quince and Duke Theseus.
The costumes, magicked up with the assistance of Andrea Fray, give a stylish nod to the idea of “hempen homespuns” and are tastefully ranged along a muted spectrum of natural shades: ochre and terracotta, slate-grey and pale green as if the characters were about to morph back into the landscape. The lovers lose some of their clothes on the way into the forest, where their experiences will strip them of dignity and reason. A focus of the disturbing irrationality of love means the production dwells on scenes that are sometimes minimised or even cut, like Demetrius threatening to assault Helena in the woods while she offers to be his “spaniel”.
Occasionally, the challenge of outdoor performance means that lines are lost or muted. And there are times when the goblins’ chittering starts to sound like the alien languages in a Star Wars space bar or a scene that is meant to be powerfully mystical, wilts a little in the open air. But this is an ambitious production with plenty of talent and great ideas in a whirlwind of weirdness and wonder.
Reviewed on 13 June 2025 and continues to tour
