A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ultimate woodland play, and it is hard to imagine a more enchanting setting for Shakespeare’s perennial mystical seasonal delight than the spotlit stage under Kew Gardens’ majestic heritage trees. Always enriched by the experience of being viewed alfresco, the fairy-dust peppered comedy takes on a new dimension when the Bard’s star-crossed lovers and mischievous fairies cavort in uniquely botanical surroundings. The natural backdrop lends an incomparable earthiness to the play.
The Australian Shakespeare Company, under the Artistic Directorship of Glenn Elston brings a remarkably fresh, dynamic and wickedly funny take to the 400-year-old play. The company has a three-decade long history of outdoor performance and homegrown partnerships with Kew’s counterparts Down Under – the Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne and Sydney.
The production is adapted to suit the space and there’s lots of fun to be had. Jono Freeman is an agile, tumbling Puck, guiding the action of the play flanked by a phalanx of punk fairies, alongside Hugh Sexton’s dour, brooding Oberon.
The quartet of lovers provide plenty of belly laughs as they clash with each other beneath the stars. Solenn Mara-Lewis is an utterly bewitching Titania, delivering her speech on the "forgeries of jealousy" in a most beguilingly impassioned manner.
The Rude Mechanicals, under the leadership of Peter Quince, the carpenter (played with considerable comedic panache by Madeleine Somers) amuse with many contemporary adjustments to the text and a hilarious Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. Elston directs with pace and imagination, while lighting designer Peter Amesbury weaves his own kind of magic, flooding the stage and frondescence surrounding it with washes of pale yellow and green, animating the ancient woodland in the darkness and amplifying the enchanting nature of the play with dramatic flashes of purple.
This is a stellar show, bringing world-class acrobatics and a touch of cabaret to the stage whilst adhering faithfully to Shakespeare’s script. It is a lively, accessible outdoor production that will delight young and old alike. I took my seven-year-old daughter along (she was one of several young children in the audience) and both of us were enthralled and entertained throughout. On a balmy August evening in the capital, there is surely no better theatrical treat.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runsat Kew Gardens until 1 September 2024.
For tickets, please visit:theatreonkew.starlight-tickets.co.uk
