A Midsummer Night's Dream

There are few phrases in contemporary theatre more abused than “immersive.” It conjures promise—of the fourth wall dissolving, of audiences swept into a new world like leaves in a storm. But let us be clear: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is no tempest. It is, at best, a mild breeze—delicately scented, expertly lit, and ever-so-politely passing you by.

With JJ Feild leading the charge as an urbane, velvet-voiced Oberon, Nicholas Hytner’s staging of Shakespeare’s moonlit romp delivers on many aesthetic fronts. It’s slick, it’s modern, and it wears its budget like a bespoke doublet. But that pesky marketing word—immersive—looms over this production like an unpaid bar tab. And it simply doesn’t deliver.

Let’s start with the “standing pit,” which the Bridge has by now made its signature gimmick. Audience members pay less to mill about on a flat stage level for a couple of hours, where the cast occasionally dances around them or asks them to shuffle aside as platforms rise from the floor. It’s closer to being a very polite obstacle than a genuine piece of theatrical integration. No one gets lost in the woods; they get gently nudged towards fire exits by ushers in black polo shirts.

The most “immersive” moment of the night may well be when an ebullient Puck (David Moorst) leaps perilously close to someone’s plastic wine cup. That, and the odd thespian brushing past you in Topshop-couture Athens chic, is about as close as we get to true enchantment. If you're hoping to be spirited away into an otherworldly forest of dream and delirium, prepare instead for a mildly participatory matinee at the Tate.

Which brings us, regrettably, to the fairies. There’s something deeply disheartening about watching a gaggle of fresh-faced dance and drama school graduates in diaphanous trousers attempting to convince us they are the mischievous, unknowable denizens of a supernatural plane. Shakespeare’s fairies, when done right, should unnerve and electrify. They should be strange and unknowable; capricious spirits who could kiss you or kill you, depending on their mood. These ones seem like they’re on a gap year between LAMDA and a low-stakes Netflix pilot.

What we get here are pliant limbs, clean lines, and “movement pieces” that feel more suited to a third-year end-of-term devised project than to Titania’s court. Their physicality is textbook, their presence pleasant—but the wildness is missing. One aches for a little danger, a touch of circus. These roles cry out for performers with aerial experience, for contortionists, for fire-spinners and tightrope walkers, artists whose bodies speak in poetry that matches the verse. For people who live in the physical extremes that these ethereal creatures are meant to inhabit.

Instead, we are offered earnest mid-air flips and the occasional interpretive swirl. It’s all a bit...safe. And, in a play which has been brought up to date with expensive staging, a witty script and confident acting, safe is not what this audience expects or deserves.

Which is not to say that all is lost in this moonlit wood. The genius move to give Titania’s lines to Oberon and vice versa still produces theatrical magic and the casting for this second coming of Hytner’s Dream is solid, if not exactly an upgrade. JJ Feild is a masterstroke of casting, his Oberon a sly, seductive, and curiously ambiguous monarch made up of equal parts RSC polish and rockstar nonchalance. He moves through the action with the self-assurance of a man who’s spent a decade brooding beautifully in BBC period dramas, and his chemistry with Titania occasionally crackles with just enough voltage to remind you why Shakespeare still gets performed.

As the fairy queen who lands her husband in bed with a lovestruck ass, Susannah Fielding lacks Gwendoline Christie’s charismatic presence or icy charm even if there is no shortage of cool precision in her speaking. In the lynchpin role of Bottom, Emmanuel Akwafo is an effective replacement for Hammed Animashaun - the star turn in the Donmar’s recent revival of Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice - with enough innate humour to lift any production, never mind one as weighty as this one.

The Mechanicals, too, are a genuine treat. In a show that so often mistakes style for soul, they bring unfiltered warmth and giddy, grounded humour. Their staging of Pyramus and Thisbe steals the evening with a display that manages to combine DIY disaster, drag realness and physical comedy in one glittering bundle. They’re pure theatrical joy: a reminder that at its core, Dream is as much about working-class performers messing about in the margins as it is about romantic entanglements among the elite.

Technically, the production is near flawless. Bruno Poet’s lighting design bathes the space in forest greens and deep purples, with clever shadowplay that at least suggests an enchanted realm. The sound design from Paul Arditti hums with magical twinkles, and Christina Cunningham’s costuming nods smartly to streetwear and stately robes alike. This is a show that looks the part.

But what it lacks—achingly so—is bite. Shakespeare’s Dream is a play of dualities: love and cruelty, reality and illusion, control and chaos. And for all its polish, this production leans too hard on the light and frothy. The forest feels like a fashion shoot, not a realm of uncertainty. The enchantments feel charming, not dangerous. And that’s the fatal flaw: nothing ever truly feels at stake.

Hytner knows how to run a tight ship, and there’s no doubt that audiences will exit smiling. But one wonders what could have been, had the fairies taken flight—literally. Had the audience been pulled into the dream, rather than positioned as politely passive voyeurs. Immersive theatre should be a fall, a tumble, a breathless gasp. This was more of a gentle lean.

A Midsummer Night's Dream continues at Bridge Theatre until 20 August.


Photo credit: Manuel Harlan