A Midsummer Night's Dream, Royal Shakespeare Company

THEATRE
by loisjeary

This is a fairy's world. Do not be fooled by the haughty authority of the King and his fiercely poised Queen-to-be, nor by the red-faced bullying tactics of a father over his daughter. No: they are but playthings, puppets manipulated for the entertainment of beings from an altogether different dimension, for it is the fairies who really hold the strings in this eerie dream.

The RSC's Dream takes place in a disjointed world, where pretty twinkling bulbs illuminate mutilated dolls and fairies dressed in fishnet gimp masks. With their backcombed mohicans and ripped black tutus, the misfit fairies look like a gaggle of teenagers who have just rebelliously splurged all their pocket money at Camden Market for the very first time. These mischievous spirits are certainly the 'shadows' Puck refers to in his conclusion to the play: they are the presence you just cannot see when you turn around, convinced that you are being followed; they are the dark shapes in the night which by daylight look suspiciously like boring old furniture: they are who have hidden your keys when you are sure you left them somewhere sensible.

Woven amongst the weirdness of these fairies are moments of theatrical beauty. The changeling boy, whom Peter de Jersey's commanding Oberon is desperate to steal from Titania, is all too often ignored when it comes to staging this play. In this production the child is present on stage in the form of a wide-eyed, naked puppet, tended to by the fairies and as lifelike as any young mortal boy. As the fairies move around him, this small child creates a sense of stillness and peace in an otherwise disrupted world. It is a powerful contrast, which serves to highlight the chaos which the changeling boy himself has caused.

On the bare mirrored stage it is the fairies which create the 'forest' which four Athenian lovers stumble into, by waving underwear on wire coat hangers in their faces to create bothersome branches which they must fight their way through. Kathryn Drysdale's Hermia is the embodiment of butter-wouldn't-melt charm, laced with a deadly manipulative streak. She skilfully exercises her feminine wiles over drippy Lysander, who for his part has seduced her with his hippy, poetic turns of phrase. Meanwhile, Edward Bennett's Demetrius is fawned over by an apparently 'plain' Helena. It is a pervasive idea that putting a beautiful woman in prescription specs, clumpy shoes and a cardigan will make her look 'ugly', and I am ashamed that the RSC should have resorted to such a repellent convention. Appearances aside, Natalie Walter's Helena starts off rather weak and feeble, but in the depths of confusion following an enchantment which makes both men fall in love with her, displays an admirable strength of both character and voice as she howls and rages at their perceived taunts.

It is not just the lovers whose worlds are turned upside down by the fairies – elsewhere in the forest the mechanicals rehearse for their play and are terrorised by Puck's shenanigans. Joe Dixon's Bottom is the ultimate in hamming it up - as the lady sat next to me herself remarked, I don't know why they always give stupid people Birmingham accents, nor why it should sound so comical, but his performance proved that there is simply nothing funnier than a donkey with a Brummie accent moonwalking across the stage and beatboxing to himself.

It can be difficult to bring innovation to the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, as much of the humour and stage directions is already written in to the language of the script. Yet this is a funny and fresh interpretation, with Ricky Champ's 'Wall' standing legs spread in red Y-fronts, the lovers knelt at his feet, unable to locate his 'chink' and coming into all manner of trouble when trying to kiss his 'hole'. It is perfectly amateurish and raucously rude, providing a welcome contrast to the mystical darkness of the fairy world.

The perfect dream transports you to an intriguing and exciting new place, but will always be full of oddities, confusion and the feeling that things are not quite as they seem. When you wake up, you will be sad that the experience has ended. This Dream is no exception.