A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is what scholars call a radical interpretation of the text.

This review contains spoilers for the play and for this production in general.

I'm sure that as soon as it was announced that Russell T. 'Doctor Who' Davies would direct a new version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, somewhere in the darkest recesses of Daily Mailtown some blind, mad ultraconservative seer began howling that it was the beginning of the end for Shakespeare and all Shakespeare would henceforth be gay (like that's never been done before.) When it was revealed that it would indeed feature a lesbian kiss, the same corners of the internet frothed predictably, and I just want to remind them that in Shakespeare's time the pay would have featured a lot of dudes kissing dudes. I'm just saying.

It's not a conventional setting.

Anyway...

Tradition is that Dream be set in a time and place redolent with romance. The golden age of Hollywood, 19th century Tuscany, fin de siecle Paris or even, should inspiration fail entirely, a blend of mythical Athens and late 16th Century England. Davies opts for that most romantic of milieus, a near-future fascist Athenian dictatorship, one masked Vigilante short of V for Vendetta, where moonlight flits are planned on touchscreens and Duke Theseus' intention to wed Hippolyta is an act of conquest against a woman kept under tighter security than Hannibal Lecter.

The Mechanicals: Fisayo Akinade, Javone Prince, Richard Wilson, Elaine
Paige and Bernard Cribbins. Not in this shot, Matt Lucas as Bottom.

John Hannah plays Theseus as a sneering villain, lording over his captive bride (Eleanor Matsuura,) yet in fear of her contained power, forcing her to read her romantic lines at gunpoint from an autocue. Egeus (Colin McFarlane) and Demetrius (Paapa Essiedu) are clearly both part of Theseus' establishment, while Lysander (Matthew Tennyson) is a bespectacled academic fleeing this harsh regime with Hermia. Hermia and Helena (Prisca Bakare and Kate Kennedy) are well cast, with a clear six inch height difference and Helena not portrayed as the minger.

Titania's fairies sport pretty butterfly wings, and they will fuck you up.

Beneath these worthies of course are the mechanicals, with their play. A wonderful mix of old luvvies and newer talent, headed by Matt Lucas' Bottom (as it were,) they bring the necessary quality of absolute sincerity to their roles. In the finale, Davies chooses to interpret Theseus' criticisms as barbed heckling, with the dark visual addition of the Duke crossing each player who answers his heckles off his ipad, contrasting their honest love for city and Duke with his utter disdain and disregard for their lives.

And then there are the fairies. Maxine Peake is a strident, muscular presence as the Amazonian Titania, while the often lissom Oberon is played by Nonso Anozi (something of a favourite in my house, thanks to his appearance in Cinderella.) The lesser faeries are a wild mob, and unlike many version, end the play by literally invading the palace of Theseus to overthrow the tyrant, not for a night of wildness, but for good. The design of Athens is nifty, but the design on the faeries is triumphant, blending elements of Middle Earth, Braveheart and Lost Boys.

Also awesome in Dracula, playing an atypical Renfield.

Shakespeare's text was a gentle rebellion - as a royally sponsored playwright he'd have been a fool to get too anarchic - but Davies is working in the twenty-first century, so he can go the whole hog, and the wild, vital fey bring Athens a release from the oppression of Theseus by delivering a wedding gift of a fatal coronary. This liberation is made literal in Hippolyta, whom Titania frees from her straight jacket (and the straight jacket of society,) to reveal her as Titania's faerie love; a reveal presaged by rearranging some of Oberon and Titania's lines.

Hiran Abeysekera as Puck is pretty good too.

So, yes; Davies does gay the thing up (also throwing in a little extra mix up with the flowers,) but it's no bad thing. It's there in the text that love is a mercurial thing after all, and that the only bad love is unrequited love (Lysander is a lover without paternal approval, which was a pretty solid no-no at the time of writing.)

Is it flawless? No. Honestly, Oberon shoots at least two more lightning bolts than are truly needed, and the music - heavily inspired by Carl Orff - is a tad overwrought at times. Despite this, it is a beautiful, marvellously energetic reinterpretation of a classic, with a deserved place in the canon of interpretations.