The Stage Review

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By Michael Coveney

Shakespeare is a rarity in the cash-strapped reps, but Gary Sefton’s brilliant Northampton Dream in the always delightful Theatre Royal with just eight actors (and a junior team of fairies) shows how to make a virtue of necessity and visual poetry in motion.

The spirit of invention is conjured by Colin Ryan’s Irish Puck, and is obviously surviving this interim period between Laurie Sansom (who’s gone to the National Theatre of Scotland) and James Dacre, the incoming artistic director.
A very physical performance is beautifully lit by Richard Godin, with the cast clambering all over Ti Green’s clever set of platforms, windows and silk drapes.

There’s a hint of the 1920s, but nothing too much to prevent Joseph Alessi doubling a stuffed-shirt Egeus with a hairy-chested, turd-dropping Bottom plus donkey teeth more menacing than Liverpool striker/biter Luis Suarez’s.

Newcomer Charlie Archer is a lovely, understated Demetrius, surprisingly stripped to the buff by the equally expository Lysander of Oliver Gomm in the riotous forest quartet scene - they’re dancing cheek to cheek, these two, not cheek by jowl.

But they can’t begin to compete with the wonderful Hermia of Naomi Sheldon (also a gloriously prim Quince, and a mattress sandwich of a Wall), a naturally gifted comedian, or Frances McNamee as a bespectacled Helena with a snorting speech defect.
And although the artisans’ play - spoons and washboard to the fore - is only done for Theseus and Hippolyta (Silas Carson and Amy Robbins do the usual doubling with dreadlocked, face-painted fairy royalty), reclining on downstage cushions, all fears that the show might run out of actors, and steam, are never realised.