A Midsummers Night Dream by William Shakespeare

By Nicole Kent

Directors Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat have stripped A Midsummer Night’s Dream of its usual sun-soaked charm, recasting it as a cold, sharp-edged fairytale—a kind of adult, slightly sinister Narnia where the magic is unsettling and the humour dark.

From the moment Sergo Vares’s Puck appears, the tone is set. Clad in a black tutu and white face makeup, he stares at the audience while slowly eating a banana. Creepy, enigmatic, and entirely captivating, this Puck is more Cabaret Emcee than mischievous sprite, contorting on and off stage, insinuating himself into the lives of mortals and the amateur acting troupe alike. His eerie presence dominates, signalling that this is no ordinary dream.

The set is a gleaming, minimalist winter landscape: a snow-white floor, a black piano, and a banquet table prepared by black-and-white uniformed staff who double as the Rude Mechanicals. This clever twist emphasizes class distinctions between the earnest, bumbling actors and the elegant, self-absorbed lovers. When the four young mortals—Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena—appear in cozy winter knits and long coats, they could have stepped straight out of a Boden catalogue. The fairies, in stark contrast, wear black tutus and white tights, their otherworldliness amplified by the cold, wintry palette. Even familiar carols like Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells are distorted and off-kilter, reinforcing a sense of magical unease.

Roughan’s direction makes the lovers’ attraction urgent and intense; lines are delivered mere inches apart, heightening the intimacy and tension. In a production that revels in reversal, the usual Robin Starveling is excised, replaced by Puck’s omnipresent chaos. Michael Marcus, doubling as Theseus, is a fairy-tale tyrant, obsessively seeking to claim Titania’s changeling—reimagined here as a girl dressed like Red Riding Hood, played beautifully by Pria Kalsi. Even Bottom’s iconic transformation is inverted: the entire cast dons donkey masks except for him, making Danny Kirrane’s earnest, slightly bumbling performance all the more endearing.

Comedy exists, notably in Tara Tijani’s sassy Helena and Tiwa Lade’s feisty Hermia, whose quarrels are sharp and hilarious. Yet Roughan keeps it contained. Even the Rude Mechanicals’ climactic performance is muted, tension simmering beneath the surface until the pristine white stage is finally fractured, revealing a violent, shocking conclusion. It’s a finale that may unsettle some, but it perfectly underscores the production’s central ambition: to turn Shakespeare’s summer frolic into a winter tale, dark, magical, and strangely beautiful.

This Midsummer is a daring, inventive ride, shedding the haze of sunny comedy for icy, spine-tingling theatre—a dream transformed into a haunting, frostbitten vision that lingers long after the curtain falls.

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