The Stage

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Published Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 10:15 by John Thaxter

Bringing Dame Judi and Sir Peter together again has brought Kingston’s Rose Theatre an international standing, while Hall’s resulting production, an enchanting celebration of love and theatrical magic, will cast a spell over all those who flock to see it.

If Shakespeare’s setting is mythical Greece, Hall’s staging is handsomely Elizabethan - black and silver costumes for the fairies, creamy whites for the lovers and rust shades for the nobles to match Queen Elizabeth’s red wig. Indeed, Dench makes her first entrance as Gloriana, accepting a playbill before waving the actors to begin.

As the English queen she then returns to portray Titania, a part she first played for Hall at Stratford in 1962. Is she now too mature to be a lovelorn, passionate fairy? Happily, the warmth of her stage personality and a light, youthful voice render this question irrelevant.

Another ‘queen’ also illuminates the evening. Rachael Stirling in terrific form plays Helena as a drama queen, starting with her heartbreaking “How happy…”, the verse aria that ends the first scene, here delivered with stunning clarity, lit by a single spotlight, an achievement that confirms her status as a star actress.

After the interval and backed by a woodland setting of spooky skeletal trees, she also shares the bruising, knockabout comedy of the lovers’ quartet with terrific comic attack from Annabel Scholey as Hermia, Tam Williams’ Lysander and Ben Mansfield as Demetrius.

Charles Edwards makes a handsome Oberon with good stage presence, but his performance is impudently upstaged by Reece Ritchie, a scene-stealing Puck, who plays his Robin Goodfellow with the melodramatic energy of a latter-day Edmund Kean.

And at the risk of citing another parallel, Oliver Chris, strongly cast as Bottom, seems to have modelled his hilariously funny Pyramus on the declamatory style of Henry Irving, a witty combination of tragedian with glorious tongue in cheek drollery.

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