A fresh new version of A Midsummer Night's Dream sails into the Royal Shakespeare Company’s fringe theatre, The Other Place this month, just the thing for a midsummer’s day. 

Created with younger audiences in mind - although there were plenty of full-size laughs from last night’s mainly adult audience - the play is a co-production with renowned London children’s theatre, The Unicorn, and has been carefully created by co-directors Rachel Bagshaw and Robin Belfield to be an accessible and enjoyable introduction to Shakespeare.

The play has been condensed into a swift 80 minutes, without an interval, and as such the original Shakespearean text has been significantly cut, but this is no modernized script. The story and Shakespeare’s language remain intact, and with some technical stagecraft and wizardry, the production reaches out a hand to bring the audience in, in the form of exceptional creative captioning. 

This is streets beyond the usual black strip at the side of the stage where the lines are read as they are spoken. Instead, the whole stage becomes a giant projector screen, and the spoken words - colour coded, and with fonts to match the characters - dance among the actors, animated to fill the space, without becoming a distraction. 

This projection, by Video and Caption Designer Will Monks, becomes an additional cast member, assisted by Lily Arnold’s deceptively complex set design. This is particularly effective in the hands of the play’s fairies - King Oberon (Chris Jared) and Queen Titania (Amelia Donkor) make their entrance into a projected whirlwind which, combined with effectively choreographed movement (by Laura Cubitt), makes it clear how much magic power the fairies have. 

The multi-tasking cast almost all play double roles, with the four young lovers - Hermia (Scout Worsley), Lysander (Kaireece Denton), Helena (Boni Adeliyi) and Demetrius (Shahin Rezvani) - also becoming the four would-be actors in the finale ‘play within a play’, and seeming to have great fun while they do it. 

Joséphine-Fransilja Brookman plays a wide-eyed and mischievous Puck throughout, while Emmy Stonelake plays the buffoonish Bottom the weaver and also - in a stroke of genius - Hermia’s overbearing father, Egeus, adding an irresistible clownish energy to the start of the play. 

The production is playful and visually stunning - the perfect summer treat, and a wonderful introduction to the world of Shakespeare. All of the performances take place in the afternoon - the last show of each day finishes at 6.30pm - making the play a wholly worthwhile addition to the school holiday calendar.

Five Stars

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was reviewed by Jessica Clixby on Wednesday 24 June at the RSC’s The Other Place, where it shows until Sunday 30 August