Simon Ward reviews A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Southwark Playhouse Borough

Since the turn of the millennium, Southwark Playhouse has been re-imagining the great works of the Shakespearean canon to create versions which can engage younger audiences, with the aim of bewitching them with the power of the storytelling, whilst navigating the challenges of the unfamiliar language. In that tradition, director Toby Hulse has set his Dream in an Edwardian nursery – led by the insistent Nancy (Daisy Ann Fletcher), six children will rehearse and perform the play, improvising props and costumes from the bits and bobs lying around. They will have no qualms about dragooning members of the audience into the action when the doubling-up of roles gets too much. If they are very lucky, there may be iced buns as their reward.

It is a beguiling premise, and the set, designed by Georgie White, is an absolute visual delight. Will Monks adds to the atmosphere by bathing it all in a kind of sepia light. The boys (Arthur, played by Martin Bassindale; Robert, played by Fintan Hayeck; Eric, played by Andy Umerah; Cecil, played by Dewi Wykes) are predictably reluctant to play – especially when they hear they will have to be fairies and, even worse, girls. In the end they are drawn in by the promise of gruesome death scenes and the irresistible lure of the iced buns. Lara Grace Ilori is well cast as Nancy’s co-conspirator, Joan, also destined by her height to play Helena to Nancy’s Hermia. The cast bring youthful exuberance to the dual roles of the children and the Shakespearean cast. Whilst they fully inhabit the adult roles, we always know that the child is lurking within. Nevertheless, the verse speaking is confident and clear.

The nursery setting adds an extra element of spice, but, in truth, this in an indestructible play. The setpiece fights between the lovers as Puck’s reckless magic spreads its mischief is as hilarious as ever. There is a lovely device where the bewitched lovers don coloured glasses to show they are under a spell. The world of the fairies is of necessity less populous than usual, and the grounds for the dispute between Oberon and Titania is judiciously edited out, to avoid any unhelpful diversions about fairies ‘owning’ boys.

Dewi Wykes makes a brilliant Puck – as Cecil he is a shy boy prone to hiding behind the curtain, but as Puck he can show his flamboyant side. And Fintan Hayeck gets to demonstrate the imaginative ways that Pyramus can use a ruler in order to pluck out his still-beating heart and still have enough energy left to decapitate himself. Martin Bassindale’s Thisbe is heartbreakingly hilarious on discovering her dead lover. The purpose of the Mechanicals’ play is somewhat lost, but it is nevertheless irresistibly funny. Puck’s concluding speech, after a delightfully appropriate coup de théâtre retains its power to move and leave the audience feeling uplifted as they depart the theatre. And the iced buns are duly delivered to a grateful cast.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is running at the Southwark Playhouse Borough until 27th September