July 2013, the month Prince George was born. A real London heatwave. I stand as close to the Globe’s stage as I can get, packed in among the sweaty groundlings. Right beside me, a girl faints. Not unexpected – she is swiftly removed by efficient people evidently trained for the purpose. Somehow, despite the heat, this most enchanting of all Shakespeare’s comedies, in Dominic Dromgoole’s tense, feral production, holds the rest of us rapt for nearly three hours.

This very production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the one the Globe Player has most recently shared during the pandemic closure – “while our doors are closed, our hearts and minds remain open” – and though the pungent body odours may be missing, the camera captures the beads of sweat. I am transported back and just as enraptured.

To fierce, challenging music on authentic instruments we are treated to a dumbshow, with a little mask magic, of the past dalliances of Greek hero Theseus and Amazon Queen Hippolyta with, respectively, Titania and Oberon, the quarrelling rulers of Fairyland. Then, in stylised battle, aggressively stamping to the fife and drum, the Greeks overcome the Amazons, the sexual tension between Theseus and Hippolyta vibrating like the Amazons’ plucked bows.  

After such an introduction, no wonder Shakespeare’s opening scene also pulsates with barely suppressed hot anger, as Theseus confidently tells a scowling Hippolyta:
 “I woo’d thee with my sword,
  And won thy love doing thee injuries,
  But I will wed thee in another key,
  With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.”
The triumph seems to be all on Theseus’ side, but Hippolyta is not to be underrated and this scintillating battle of the sexes surely cannot help but end in revelry.

While Theseus ponders how to fill in the time before he can bed his warrior bride, furious Egeus arrives demanding judgement on his daughter Hermia, who, in love with Lysander, is refusing to marry her father’s choice, Demetrius. The lovers plan to meet in the woods outside the city and elope, while Demetrius intends to pursue them, having learnt of the scheme from his spurned girlfriend, Hermia’s friend Helena, who in her turn means to follow Demetrius.  

This makes a fine start to Shakespeare’s ingenious plot of tangling up three disparate groups for a night of mad confusion on midsummer eve.  For it is in these same woods that the working men of Athens have decided to rehearse the comically dreadful play they hope will be chosen as entertainment for the royal wedding. More ominously, this wood is the haunt of Oberon and Titania, whose battle for control of a changeling boy has thrown the natural world into chaos, a climate change catastrophe that they describe in magical language.

There is nothing delicate or sweet about these fairies, no tinsel, no star-tipped wands. The famous 1620 woodcut of a bare-chested Robin Goodfellow with horns, hooves, shaggy thighs and enormous phallus must surely have been the inspiration for director and costume designer. The earthy brown costumes are topped with feathers, horns, furs, animal masks, bare skin and wild Bacchic curls; the dancing to discordant music is saturnalian and even the lullaby for their Fairy Queen is sinister.

The thrilling, highly charged relationship between Titania and Oberon, echoing that of Hippolyta and Theseus and played by the same actors, underlines the erotic and animalistic nature of this interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Shakespeare’s world, fairies were dangerously powerful, and at the outset John Light’s Oberon is magnificent but cruel. Yet although he vindictively sets out to punish his Queen by putting her under a love-spell, this production allows him to be changed by the events he witnesses.

Playing both Hippolyta and Titania, Michelle Terry is as bewitching on screen as she was in the flesh. A brilliant actor, if an unexpected choice for the Fairy Queen, she is fierce, regal and dignified when required, but nevertheless has a sparkle of mischief that is always beguiling. As feral as the fairies in her skirt of furry animal tails and crown of twisted twigs, once in the power of the love-charm she caresses her donkey-headed monster with a sensuous enthusiasm that would seriously disturb the SPCA.

Matthew Tennyson as Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is decidedly creepy, his angular movement strangely inhuman and his line “Lord, what fools these mortals be” delivered with scorn rather than glee. His relationship with Oberon, who regularly manhandles him, once kissing him passionately, is ambiguous to say the least, and he takes sardonic pleasure in the chaos caused by his application of Oberon’s love charm to the wrong lover.

The nobles of Athens follow the costume trend, dressed in baggy breeches with huge cod-pieces – Lysander and Demetrius readily stripping off their shirts as they prepare to fight – while the girls’ formal Renaissance gowns disintegrate to muddy rags. The miseries of romantic love are treated lightly, all the ridiculous muddles causing nothing but howls of laughter, although Helena’s speech is surprisingly moving when she accuses Hermia of betraying their friendship.

The four young actors give it their all, their faces working frantically, and are so utterly cute in their absurdity I don’t mind that the energy and frenetic pace occasionally make the voices of both sexes rather shrill. As ever at the Globe, the physical comedy is simply sublime, especially in the side-splitting fight scenes.

Heralded by the cries of a cuckoo, the workmen, the ‘Mechanicals’, make a spectacular entrance in a neatly executed clog dance. The six complement each other beautifully but I am drawn to Fergal McElherron as a sweetly fussy yet excitable Quince, earnestly trying to control his cast, and Christopher Logan as spindly Flute, making a touchingly desperate attempt to bring a little dignity to the role of the lady.

Pearce Quigley, as Nick Bottom, the weaver has one of the plum roles in the Shakespearean canon. Curiously, a week ago I reviewed Quigley as Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, appreciating the subtleties of his performance which was more lugubrious than boisterous. His Bottom is not dissimilar. My preference is for a Bottom bursting with exuberance, enthusiastically eager to tackle everything, the life and soul of the party. Quigley makes him a superior put-down artist. Nothing shakes his self-esteem, and though his mates may admire him, you wouldn’t want him for a friend. But he is certainly very funny, his ad-libs and coy sideward glances to the audience evoking a delighted response.

The comical tragical tale of Pyramus and Thisbe acted by the workmen can hardly fail, but Dromgoole has managed to discover some original tweaks that make this half-hour worth rewinding and watching again and again. I am charmed when these clearly competent tradesmen drag in and smartly set up an actual replica of the Globe theatre in which to perform their play, complete with little faux marble pillars and slightly shabby hangings.

There are almost too many visual gags to catch them all, but it is inspired to have Bottom crash through the set-up stage only to have Snug the joiner pop up under him with hammer and nails to effect a repair on the spot. And I love the little one-upmanship clog dance executed by Bottom and Quince.

With its intricate plot and hilarious situations, its three completely distinctive groups, each so alien to the others but interacting so gloriously, its fearsome supernatural element and its transcendent flights of poetry, A Midsummer Night’s Dream really is a piece of perfection. This thoughtful, darker interpretation by the Globe is especially relevant to a world that seems to have lost its innocence in its deadly fear of the ‘Other’.

Ah Shakespeare – not of an age but for all time, indeed.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer