A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe - theatre review

Matthew Tennyson's Puck is beguilingly fey, while Luke Thompson, as a Lysander beaming with childlike over-enthusiasm, makes a professional debut of some note in this warm, comic production
p45 edition 31.05 A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theatre Matthew Tennyson as Puck, John Light as Oberon ©Alastair Muir
©Alastair Muir
7 October 2013

It’s all but inevitable that one of our outdoor spaces will stage A Midsummer Night’s Dream during the “warm” months, to remind us that, in Shakespeare’s time at least, there was such a thing as a summer. Usually the honours go to the Open Air Theatre but this year it’s the Globe, for whom artistic director Dominic Dromgoole has created a warm, comic vision ideally pitched to this performance space. His production bursts with crowd-pleasing gestures; a groundling in front of me actually skipped with delight on the reappearance of Bottom after the unfortunate incident with the ass’s head.

Finding performers who are at ease here is a trickier task than it seems but Dromgoole has picked a winner in Michelle Terry, who is having quite the year after a memorable turn in Before the Party at the Almeida recently. Her rich, strong voice reaches out confidently and the doubling-up of a contrary, forceful Hippolyta and Titania is shaded by her coming over all lovestruck under Oberon’s magic herb.

There’s a fine line between “outstanding” and “grandstanding” and Pearce Quigley stays just the right side of it as Bottom. His deadpan northern delivery suggests Alan Bennett as a rude mechanical and the climactic Pyramus and Thisbe scene had me — and most of the audience — snorting with laughter. The starchy formality of the court in Act Five is punctured by the unpreparedness of Bottom and his clog-dancing chums to present their disastrous play, which comes with a makeshift set so rickety that Pyramus’s foot goes repeatedly through the floorboards.

Unusually among the four lovers, the boys are better than the girls and Luke Thompson, as a Lysander beaming with childlike over-enthusiasm, makes a professional debut of some note. We’ll hear more of him and also Matthew Tennyson, last year’s winner of the Evening Standard’s most promising newcomer award. Tennyson’s Puck is beguilingly fey, teasing Oberon (John Light, terse) with hints of insouciance. He even fits in stretching exercises before setting off to put a girdle around the earth.

In rep until Oct 12 (020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com)

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