A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. To 20 April.

Manchester

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
by William Shakespeare

Royal Exchange Theatre To 20April 2002
Mon-Fr 7.30; Sat 8pm + Mats Wed 2.30pm, Sat 4pm
23-27 March: Education week (Details: 0161 615 6720/6721)
Runs 2hr 55min One interval

TICKETS 0161 833 9833
Review Timothy Ramsden

Lively, gutsy production with its own modern view that doesn't betray the Dream.When teenage audience members cheer loudly at a play's end it's either sarcasm after tedium or genuine enthusiasm. No doubt which applied to Lucy Bailey's dynamic Dream. The school-party whispers were responding to onstage action; three lads ate their fruit pastilles with eyes glued to the action. And, though occasional moments overlaid the script with business, and while some of the poetry's gentler measures were roughed-up, for the greatest part Bailey digs into the play without undermining it.

It's a sassy, sexy show which works largely by the actors' clothes coming off. Not because this is Shakespeare goes Full Monty but because clothing expresses these characters' posturing. The real-world and the Fairy king and queen are doubled, as usual, but after the night's dreaming McEwan's lightly-suited Oberon and Maclean's white, lightly-covered Titania emerge from explosive sex to resume in full view their over-clothing of daytime monarchs Theseus and Hippolyta. Daytime manners are a habit, the real world comes with night and secrecy.

It's in their body-concealing garments we first meet them, she with swords drawn, equally passionate in fighting and snogging Theseus. Sex and violence continue inseparable.

Fashion expresses the lovers; the young men have their contrasting cool, favoured-suitor Demetrius his sharp suit, lover-boy Lysander petulant and self-obsessed – see his amateur guitar-strumming as he lets Hermia carry the luggage through the wood – in denims and shades. They're image men both, though the excellent Fenella Woolgar's Helena sports violent-hued boots which upstage them both. These image men, and women, lose their garb less through bushes and briars than by forever fighting, pushing, kicking and dunking (a handy pool lies nearby) each other.

Ancient and modern collide throughout, Puck emerging as our old media chum Swampy, of the bypass protests. Fusing the flickering light under which the passions are, improbably enough, played out (a streetlamp named Desire?), setting off smoky confusion, he follows up his be-heading of Tom Hodgkins' weaver-cum-wannabe- actor by denuding him, leaving a very bare Bottom behind. Hodgkins' over-gestural amateurishness is his own equivalent to the lovers' social posing.

Two worlds clash at the wedding, the court in Elizabethan formality, the Mechanicals performing off the back of their truck, with a Wild West Pyramus and Thisbe. But it's been the undress that's stripped the play to its roots in this highly original production.

Theseus/Oberon: Paul McEwan
Hippolyta/Titania Hilary Maclean
Philostrate/Changeling Boy: Franky Mwangi
Egeus/Qunice: Francis Magee
Hermia: Madeleine Worrall
Lysander: Jonathan /Bond
Demetrius: Justin Avoth
Helena: Fenella Woolgar
Flute/Attendant: Chris Jackson
Snout: Toby Hadoke
Snug: Howard Chadwick
Starveling/Attendant: Trevor Dwyer-Lynch
Puck: Robin Laing
Moth: Kay D'Arcy
Peasblossom: Macushla Cannell
Cobweb: Audrey Brady
Mustardseed: Andy Abraham
Musician: Luke Stoneham

Director: Lucy Bailey
Designer: Rae Smith
Lighting: Jon Buswell
Sound: Steve Brown
Music: Luke Stoneham
Choreographer: Leah Hausman
Fight director: Renny Krupinski
Assistant director: Ginnie Elgar

2002-03-20 12:58:53