Midsummer Night’s Dream Globe Theatre

[paddy72]

London has three Dreams up and running now and this gets my vote for being the most fun and happy. A magical riot of colour and imagination. There are too many good things in it to shout out about and purists will struggle to appreciate its rawness. However what it lacks in reverence it makes up for in charm and ingenuity. Like a cross between a great panto - including audience participation where Starvling is played by ‘one of us’ plucked from the Yard - and a Mexican carnival - sets and costumes are by the designer of The Grinning Man. The cast are universally great. Most hilarious scene is between Bottom and Titania getting it on in a refuse dumpster. Any Shakespeare show that gets in the first line of Circle of Life from the Lion King and ends with 80s sing along Caravan of Love has got the rest beat. And it’s in London’s best theatre ever where you get to take as much booze and pasties in with you as you like. Everyone came out beaming with happiness and love on the night I went. Just what summer is for.

[NorthernAlien]

I've just seen this at the midnight matinee. Groundlings started leaving early in the second act, which might have been due to public transport issues, but given that it was already gone 1.30am at that point, perhaps not.

If you're going to see more than one of the current 'Dreams', I'd suggest seeing this *before* the one at the Bridge, which I felt has thought about some of the trickier bits of the text more carefully.

In this one I liked the bits where they briefly spoke in other languages, and the actors are all absolutely working their backsides off with excessive amounts of multi-rolling. But too little felt fresh for me. And I have something of an issue with the 'mexican fiesta vibe', actually. The whole thing felt somewhat like a student production with not enough actors, a director who hadn't quite thought it through enough, and the sheer good fortune of an extremely 'on fire' seamstress.