A Midsummer Night’s Dream review: Fairy punk production doesn’t quite take flight
A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre | ★★★☆☆
A dreamy setting for a dreamy play? Surely you can’t get much better than A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is exactly why the play has already been staged almost 50 times at the royal park in its 80-year theatre history. Atri Banerjee’s 2026 punt gives the play a folk-rock aesthetic, complete with a punkish fairy band and neon dip dyed hair Titania, but ultimately struggles to take flight.
Staged on a simple, wooden block, tiered stage, Banerjee’s production opens with the full cast ambling onto the stage as they look to find ‘their places’, a fitting foreshadowing for a play in which none of course will be able to stay in them. Giddy play quickly ensues, as our four lovers Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena are varyingly led astray by the nymphish Puck, armed with love potions and a bad sense of who’s who, until the sun sets and everything is put back together again.
Of the lovers, Mary Malone’s Helena is the star. It’s the best part of the four granted, but Malone makes for a particularly endearing klutz in the role as she darts around in unapologetic pursuit of Demetrius in a tiered ruffled gown, dewy-eyed in her unrequited affections at the open and then quickly exasperated as soon as they are returned. I can’t say for sure if her spaniel speech (“I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me), delivered on all fours with a ribbon-tied ponytail, is an intentional homage to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Isabella, but there are certainly likenesses.
Music and physical comedy rule this production
Music makes for a particular high point throughout. The production features original songs written by Mamuna Memon, played live by a Last-Dinner-Party-meets-Shakespeare fairy band who preside over the action from the top of the stage. Amelia Gabriel (Mustardseed) is particularly striking as fairy band frontwoman, with an impressive stage presence and ethereal voice that sets the dreamy atmosphere. Costuming by Tomas Palmer also goes a long way, with an aesthetic that manages to be both natural and flamboyant: think moss green feather jackets and berry purple linens.
Meanwhile Jenny Rainsford (of Fleabag fame) brings a unique earthiness to her Titania. As her fairies play at her will, she sways wildly across the stage, barefoot in a cream silk slip with fag in hand. Elsewhere, she brings a notable anger to the role, possessive and rageful as she shouts at Oberon over the stealth of her ‘Indian boy’. (The ins and outs of this particular plotline, often omitted in productions, is not particularly clear to follow, and is one of the elements that muddles this production.)
For laughs, Banerjee mostly relies on physical comedy, largely delivered by deaf actor Nadeem Islam who plays a well-received slapstick Bottom. Elsewhere, the wit built into Shakespeare’s dialogue is often not drawn out, with underpowered delivery and a reliance on more obvious, modern gags added in instead.
It’s essentially a sin not to use the landscape at Regent’s Park, which Banerjee comes dangerously close to committing. The stage itself is pretty bland. Characters occasionally exit via the bushes, and Puck and Oberon conspire from above in the treetops, but otherwise it cultivates an intentional backstage feel. ‘THIS GREEN PLOT’, a reference to Peter Quince’s play within the play (“this green plot shall be our stage”) is printed across the top of the set.
Nonetheless, just as Peter Quince and his merry troupe delight in finding their play within the play will be staged when the moon shines just right, there is undeniable magic as the action unfolds in time with the sunset. By Puck’s epilogue, delivered in twilight, it is the same slumber over the cast and audience, a delicious drowsiness as we are reminded in the words of the bard of the foolishness of it all: And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 18 July