Chaotic, if good-natured, muddle: Hytner’s Midsummer Night’s Dream reviewed

Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in a world of puritanical austerity. The cast wear sombre black costumes and Oliver Chris, with menacing swagger, brings a note of palpable sadism to the role of Theseus. Then things relax as the ‘mechanicals’ in modern boiler suits prepare to rehearse the play. Hammed Animashaun (Bottom) dominates this little scene with his impish charm and unpredictability. He’s a high-calibre talent of whom more will be heard.

After this solid opening, disaster strikes. The forest sequences, already devilishly overcomplicated, are presented on double beds which move restlessly all over the shop and make the story almost impossible to follow. And Hytner has flipped the chief roles. In this version it’s Oberon, not Titania, who falls in love with Bottom dressed as a donkey. Is that a blow for feminism? If so it has strange results. Gwendoline Christie (Titania) has lost the chance to play an iconic piece of Shakespearean comedy. Act One culminates in a spoof dance routine between Bottom and Oberon choreographed by Arlene Phillips. What a triumph this might have been if the actors had been left alone on a normal stage. But they’re stuck on the mattresses of the wandering double beds and they have to compete with a handful of twirling acrobats who dangle from silk ropes and perform somersaults. Far too much fussy detail. The accompanying nightclub soundtrack turns the scene into a chaotic, if good-natured, muddle. Is this Shakespeare? It looks like a fancy-dress party in a warehouse.

The Finborough Theatre offers two plays of Edwardian vintage. It Is Easy To Be Dead is a biography of the Scots poet Charles Hamilton Sorley, who was killed in action in October 1915. Before the war he studied at Oxford and at the University of Jena where he fell in love with his married landlady.