“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Bridge Theatre
Jeremy Malies on South Bank
8 June 2025
Nicholas Hytner’s joyous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes a welcome return to the Bridge Theatre after six years. Beyoncé’s “Love on Top” halfway through the show brought me even more into the party spirit. Perhaps Beyoncé herself who was doing a concert seven miles away at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (struggling in the rain, suffering wardrobe malfunctions, and failing to fill the venue) would have had a better time listening to her own music with us south of the river?
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
Neon hues and fluorescent leotards in Christina Cunningham’s costume designs for the fairies might suggest all this is saccharine and otherworldly. But there is a harder, feminist and even revisionist lens at work that gives the project its many levels and emotional heft. A separate faction of fairies who dart around the quartet of aristocratic lovers wear drab boiler suits and are vaguely dystopian. And lighting by Bruno Poet morphs from pastels to russet tones suggesting that things will turn autumnal in this forest quicker than is the norm.
At the start, Susannah Fielding as Hippolyta is wheeled on in a glass museum case complete with a label “Queen of the Amazons”. She eyeballs us and suggests strength of character. But Hytner is making it clear that his personal take on Greek mythology is that she is a war trophy and very much the property of Theseus played by JJ Feild. Just to underline that this is not going to be a riot of colour and melody, original music by Grant Olding begins with a chorus of Margaret Atwood-ish figures in grey tunics and headscarves intoning a hymn that is little more than plainchant.
By contrast with these bleak elements there is much that is playfully self-aware with asides from the Rude Mechanicals to the effect that this is being done in the round and is “immersive” theatre. Well, semi-immersive with gags like that!
My only quibble is that in-the-round staging deprived me of my favourite moment. This is the look on Helena’s face as she realizes that she has gone from being ignored and even reviled to the object of lust from both men. Lily Simpkiss, who I suppose must be looking one way or the other, had her back to me! Simpkiss, in her professional debut, is suitably ardent while philosophizing on the nature of love.
Titania (Fielding doubling up as is the norm) tells us that “rheumatic diseases do abound” in the forest. Only these had stopped me from taking the promenade option which looked more spontaneous than the marshalled movement in Julius Caesar and Guys & Dolls at the same venue. Perhaps a third of the audience mingle with the cast while the rest of us are seated on all four sides. Actors often hitch a ride as rostrum structures rise up into the playing area and are used as stepping stones.
David Moorst as Puck.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
Bunny Christie’s set design has characters disappearing through the mattresses of bunkbeds. (David Moorst as a supercilious Puck makes an exit this way as he taunts the mortals.) Christie suspends characters from slings in which they perform somersaults before intertwining to create linear patterns in choreography by Arlene Phillips.
Former Strictly judge Phillips uses the original stage directions as a springboard for movement without imposing anything alien on the five romantic entanglements in the plot. Six romances here perhaps since there is something going on between Demetrius (Paul Adeyefa) and Lysander (Divesh Subaskaran) whose “cheek by jowl” exit takes on new meaning. Phillips has surely helped Fielding with her birdlike movements around Oberon which resemble a courtship ritual.
I don’t need to talk about freshness or the current cast for this revival from 2019 because the whole project was new to me. I liked the fact that the fairies are as much threatening and grotesque as enchanting and welcoming. Moorst (one of the survivors from the original cast) oozes cunning and underlines that the forest is a dangerous place where it is wise to be cynical.
Often as tedious as Theseus expects it will be, the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude seems relevant here. Much of this is down to Felicity Montagu who plays Quince in the manner of a harassed indulgent adult education supervisor. Her colleagues are keen but challenging; she must balance egos, abilities, and the improvised props if the play is to come off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a production in which the competing acts for the interlude slot appear on stage in the manner of a talent show. Hytner (his co-director is James Cousins) has fun when introducing the Athenian eunuch harpist and some balloon-popping women revellers as the Bacchanals.
I loved the music and am now a convert to Beyoncé as sung by Molly Hewitt-Richards who plays Snug. Dizzee Rascal and his rap track “Bonkers” might be a step too far but the lyrics leapt out at me: “I wake up every day, it’s a daydream / Everything in my life ain’t what it seems.” Nothing is what it seems in this forest and that is the subtlety of Hytner’s rare vision.
Everybody seems bisexual, bicurious, or generally fluid. But the thrust (pardon the phrase) is that instead of Titania lusting after Bottom (Emmanuel Akwafo) it is Feild as Oberon who, hilariously, shares the forest bower, a bathtub, and champagne with him. The purist in me baulked at some ludicrous and crass contemporary asides that even include references to Londoners when Puck has told us clearly that we are just outside Athens. And Harry Potter could have been left out of things. But the speaking of Shakespeare’s verse (no voice coach is credited so Hytner must be supervising the cast) is always on the metre while still being naturalistic.
The change of agency makes us ponder girl power. Hytner is ensuring that we have subliminal awareness of Hippolyta who as a war trophy is in a forced marriage and holds no cards in the power struggle. There are parallels with the possible fate of Hermia (Nina Cassells) at the start of the play. We see her father’s attempts to force her into a loveless marriage with a threat that disobedience will have her in a nunnery and singing with the choir who begin the play. Synergy of this kind elevates the production beyond a balletic masque to something bewitching, ethereal, and significant.
