Last Updated on February 20, 2026
A violent take on a timeless comedy
2.5 out of 5.0 starsThe smell of mulled wine sticks in the nostrils at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ahead of The Globe’s latest staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – but the production itself is no warming affair.
Shakespeare’s beloved comedy takes on the eternal themes: love, jealousy, and unreality. The action turns around the romantic infatuations of a love quadrangle, an approaching wedding, and a clumsy acting troop. It foregrounds the changeability of passion, the agony of unrequited feelings, and the delights of lust. Experiencing the play might feel like drifting through dreams in the small hours of the morning, the real and the fantastical weaving inextricably together. It’s both hallucinogenic and sharply lucid theatre.
Holly Race Roughan’s (Henry V, Small Hotel) production opens on a regency-style dining room. Silverware is set out by the cast across a long, white-clothed table that runs perpendicular to the pit, news conference style. Designer Max Johns offers a pearly-white marble floor; the backdrop is a pale, corniced façade. Characters don lapels and smart evening wear; animal skins hang around necks. This is a moneyed, impersonal universe, far from sun-baked Athens.
This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream leans heavily on the inherent hierarchies of the stately family. Nick Bottom (Danny Kirrane – Jerusalem) doubles as the house chef; Oberon (Michael Marcus – The Land of the Living) is his tyrannical master, so furious that he slams a roasted pig to the floor in Act I. Demetrius, played by Louis Jackson (Tom’s Midnight Garden), is an entitled son, swanning and squinting about the stage. This play about elusive love trials becomes a jagged battle of wills. More furious game of snap than strategic romantic chess.
Race Roughan draws out the violence of love (a revolver appears more than once). Our characters do escape to the forest – but the emotional core of the play is wedded to the polished surfaces and cold silverware of the grand house.
The evening is elevated by two striking performances. Sergo Vares (The Winter’s Tale) as Puck, painted like a sinister mime artist, is incisive and atmospheric. His strange body contortions and quick audience interactions spotlight the bizarre aspects of the play. And Danny Kirrane as Nick Bottom was engaging as a loveable, quick-tempered fool. He was the audience’s cuddly entry point to a play so cold that at times snow cascades from the rafters.
Beyond these performances, there were frictions. The production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream underscores rage as a symptom of love: Oberon is violent throughout, Titania (Hedydd Dylan – The Comedy of Errors) simmers in her resentment of him. Demetrius is sexually aggressive; even Bottom rages violently. Hermia (Tiwa Lade – My Father’s Fable) and Helena (Tara Tijani – The Merry Wives of Windsor) almost come to blows; Lysander (David Olaniregun – Romeo and Juliet) and Demetrius repeatedly square up. Hardly an act passes without someone hitting the deck.
This production might’ve been a tempestuous rage-fest balanced, ultimately, by an escape to the forest, to the delights of magic. But it doesn’t deliver on these much-needed counterpoints. Shakespeare’s comedy, originally set around the summer solstice, is surely about an ascension beyond the rageful and into final magical bliss. The production inverts this trajectory but sacrifices key ingredients in doing so. A convincing woody scene and a genuine sense of magic never found integrity. The result was a spiral into ugly emotions, with lethal (plot-altering) consequences. This was a warm comedy draped in a tragic sheet.
The stark set compounds these imbalances. In Act II, Oberon commands Puck to retrieve a “milk-white” flower hit by Cupid’s arrow and turned “purple with love’s wound”. The purple flower is a totem of the play’s earthy passions. Yet, in its regency theme, the production aligned itself too strongly with the pre-Cupid flower: a sterile milk-white husk. Characters are wounded, yes, but the gushing blood is passionless.
This winter-themed iteration of a traditionally summery play is confident and experimental. There are intriguing performances to enjoy here. But the cosy interior of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse never quite felt like a wooded grove. This flaw capped the production’s resonance.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from 25th November to 31st January.
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
New Globe Walk
London
SE1 9DT
Looking for something different? We recommend END currently showing at the Dorfman, National Theatre
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