A Midsummer Night’s Dream At The Rep

The Birmingham Rep has always had an affinity with Shakespeare adaptations with a twist, and their latest staging  illustrates this just beautifully. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a wonderfully entertaining spectacle that brings the bard kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. It is beautiful to look at, and a joy to listen to, as the Shakespearean dialect is all in tact. But it is also very, very funny, and ultimately joyous as it proves that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.’

A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is Shakespeare at both his most Dreamy, and most mischievous. Directors Joe Murphy and Madeleine Kludje have taken both of those ideas to create a play that feels new and vibrant without losing what made it so special in the first place. So we still have the star crossed young lovers, except we now have a same sex couple Hermia and Lysandra (the great pairing of Isabel Adomakoh Young and Evie Ward-Drummond). We still have Puck now played to perfection by the wondrous Adam Carver aka drag artiste Fatt Butcher, complete with show stopping songs and outrageous costumes. We still have Titania and Oberon, being played by the brilliant pairing of Ellena Vincent and Haydyn Oakley, who in their duel roles as Hippolyta and Theseus are concerned with our modern planet issues.

And we still have Bottom. What an amazing, hilarious performance Omar Malik gives in this role. He basically steals the show, and his final scene, in the play within the play is incredibly, side splittingly funny.

Everything about this staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream works. The choice of some 1980s tunes just add to the modern feel, as do the cast wearing modern days clothes. The illusions to Birmingham are subtle and lovely rather than overdone, and the Forest, so important to the story is beautiful and cleverly created, a real triumph.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the best Shakedpeare adaptation you will see this year. Just wonderful.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Birmingham Rep Theatre

Until Sunday 24th May

Click here for ticket information.

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