Comedy is the hallmark of this production. Everything is played for it, making the evening hugely enjoyable as the capacity audience demonstrated. Of course, the play is a comedy, a great comedy, and it should have plenty of laughs, so it might seem churlish to complain, and I am not. But it is as well to 'locate' this production in comparison with the countless others. What does it offer, and what not.
       At the heart of the 'Dream' are the mechanicals preparing their play to celebrate the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. They are masterfully (I use the word because they are all men - mustn't be sexist in a review!) played from Snug the joiner's timid lion to Bottom's braggadocio. Robert Goodale (Snug) is a hoot as the lion and the reticent participant, as Michael Matus (Quince) is magnificent as the frustrated author and producer of the play, endlessly trying to coax his 'amateurs' into behaving on stage and pronounce "Ninny's tomb" as "Ninus's tomb". In Act Five Jonathan Bond's "Wall" almost steals the show as he recites his lines at breakneck speed. Peter Bankolé (Flute) nicely translates from being 'butch' to Thisby's "talking small". But inevitably the star of the mechanicals is "bully" Bottom played with everything in his repertoire by Paul Hunter. It was a joy seeing him trying to take on every part, and then when transformed into an ass having every part of his body scratched and titillated. In the scenes with Titania there were more sexual innuendos and ('outuendos') than I have ever seen. It was gloriously raunchy, especially the phallic sword with all its implications of piercing and savaging. None of the comicals missed a moment of perfect timing, right from Act 1 to their final bergomask.
       One conceit of the production was to double Theseus with Oberon and Titania with Hippolyta, and this seemed in part to try to settle the imperfections in their love suggested in the opening scenes by Hippolyta's open sympathy for Hermia's loving Lysander, disapproved of by Theseus. The supposed tension between Theseus and Hippolyta (not in the text) converts nicely into real tension (in the text) between Oberon and Titania over the changeling boy. Sexual jealousy broods between them, and this was played with ferocious gusto by Tom Mannion (Theseus/Oberon) and Siobhan Redmond (Hippolyta/Titania); and in case you did not notice their costume change, as fairies they spoke in Scottish accents, sometimes not so audibly. Mixing the real and the unreal, the fairy world contains some of the more complex elements of Shakespeare's comedy, which, rather like the much later Tempest, suggest that the removal of reality to the country of the imagination, or the dream, can play out and help heal the unspoken rifts in everyday life. This is an idea with rich ramifications, as the relation between the play and the play-within-a-play holds a mirror to the relationship between the stage-play and the audience, achieving through fiction a catharsis in life. I have seen this psychological aspect played more potently in other productions, which eschewed the comedy between the fairy and real life king and queen to reveal this more complex side. However, at the Globe this worked well enough, and the performances of Tom Mannion and Siobhan Redmond were beautifully judged within the comic remit.
       Michael Jibson's Puck was a comic delight as it was played for every laugh it could get. In the process the ominous side of Puck, his ability to manipulate minds by magic flowers, to haunt invisibly innocent townsmen and to transform ordinary men into beasts was lost. Maybe Puck represents Cupid, or is just a personification of blind Love, but he is not just a comic character. He is more sinister than that, and, typically with Shakespeare, has some of the most haunting, in every sense, lines. He ends the play with an attempt to dissolve the illusion that he has played a major part in creating. Yet, once again, laughter was the goal, and Michael Jibson's street-wise (but not always person-wise) Puck fitted perfectly into the production's agenda, playing the role with vigour, athleticism and a great deal of excellent comic timing and action, not least the gruesome removal of the male lovers' eyeballs to insert the magic liquid.
       Along with comedy, sex plays a big part in this production. Shakespeare may have implied it in such scenes as how close Lysander should sleep to Hermia when they run away to the woods. But Jonathan Munby, the producer, brings it centre-stage with an obvious night of passion between Titania and Bottom/Ass on a large and erotic movable bed. Denied sex by her husband, Titania is tricked into sex with a beast by Oberon and Puck. Sexual tension also runs rife with the young lovers, Hermia and Lysander and Demetrius and Helena. In some productions these characters can be somewhat dull in comparison to the fairies and the mechanicals, but not here. Christopher Brandon (Lysander), Oliver Boot (Demetrius), Pippa Nixon (Hermia) and Laura Rogers (Helena) played out their ardent and frustrated loves with passion and comedy. I don't think I have ever laughed so much at their plights, either those caused by their own devices or the deceptions heaped upon them. Hermia's coyness and Helena's self-doubting frustration were superbly caught by Pippa Nixon's and Laura Rogers's gorgeous performances, at the heart of which was the scene in which Helena calls Hermia a 'puppet', a remark which she immediately assumes is a reference to her height. You could hear the audience gasp as Pippa Nixon paused before repeating the insulting word with all the outraged anger she could muster. True to the production's aims the high-octane love affairs were played for laughs, which they got in abundance.
The fairies were dressed as gothic monstrosities, part way between squatting hippies, new age drop-outs and all-encompassing weirdoes of any description. They were miles away from their more common sweet benignity. They seemed positively to relish all the potential they might have to interfere and upset all the shenanigans with which the wood seemed to have presented them that evening. Given the importance of 'dream' in the production, the fairies in places were closer to nightmare, and in a sense were the one element that suggested at the darker side of Shakespeare's play. Far from truly looking after Bottom, at moments they seemed to hover between care, seduction and destruction. But their over-stated (no criticism implied) gruesomeness only added to the evening's laughs.
       As always at the Globe the set was minimal, thus the few props spoke volumes, not least the flowers in the forest. They looked good, but as the play says "we see with the mind" as they also implied the 'drugged' world of the wood. This is a romp of a production which should play night after night to delighted audiences. "Laugh, I nearly died", but "there is a world elsewhere."
Roderick Swanston