ShakesPeers is a young company with an agenda. They want to take the solemn out of Shakespeare and make it fast, funny, and fear-free. Their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream manages this with some ease.

One of the mismatched couples is same-sex, Titania doubles with Theseus, the darkly scheming Oberon is played by young woman who is also a mean and moody Hippolyta, and Puck has a licence to camp it up outrageously. The cross-gendered shenanigans allows for a fresh view of this somewhat overproduced play. Doubling fairies and rude mechanicals makes the Cobweb/Mustardseed/Peasblossom assembly considerably spikier and more interesting. Do they want to spend their time scratching the head of a weird donkey? They do not.

The company seem to be enjoying themselves, and that enthusiasm is infectious. It’s not a complicated play, if you accept chemically induced love at first sight and recognise that loving one person requires being beastly to another. And that when the drugs no longer work, all the horrible things you said last night will be quite forgotten. Hey, it’s a dream. Dreams have different rules.

There is a lot of lovely verse in the play, and that gets lost a bit in the jollification, but it’s a price worth paying for a vital, slightly rude, energetic evening in the company of a bunch of “ShakesPeers”.

Playing until 6^th June 2026.

Four Stars.

Reviewed by Chris Lilly.

https://space.org.uk/