Thanks to the moronic incompetence of South West Trains and a view of passengers as The Enemy rather than valued customers, I arrived at Kingston's Rose Theatre with -30 seconds to spare.
I know listening to someone's commuting woes is about as interesting as listening to their dreams, but the point is, I was in a really foul temper to start with. I emerged nearly three hours later with a fixed and goofy smile on my face, undismayed even by the prospect of my return journey. A Midsummer Night's Dream may, indeed, be "the silliest stuff that ever I heard", as Shakespeare cheerfully admits via Hippolyta in a helpful meta-commentary. But in this superlative new Peter Hall production, as feelgood shows go, this 400-year-old favourite is still as good as any.
Judi Dench as Titania may be too old — she first played the role some years before I was born — but what a lot she brings to it. She is every inch a queen here, the Queen of the Fairies but also the Virgin Queen of England, with richly embroidered Elizabethan dress, white ruff, and pearls sparkling in her dyed carroty hair.
The scene in which she falls for a translated Bottom, now adorned with an ass's head, is as comical as ever, yet you're also convinced Titania really is in the throes of passionate love. The line, "O, how I love thee, how I dote on thee!", spoken with such husky and tremulous longing, and with that permanent crack in her voice, is deeply touching — even in this most farcical of situations. When they awake, you're in no doubt how they have spent the night. One of Shakespeare's more scandalous jokes, like the mythical Pasiphae, the clear implication here is that Titania's affections have, er, crossed the species barrier.
Recent productions by Peter Hall have sometimes felt like the work of a master, but one whose best is behind him. This Dream is a tremendously energetic septuagenarian rebuttal of such impertinent thoughts, with some brilliant additions. Bottom's fluffed lines about the lion having deflowered his beloved (he means "devoured" — another bestiality joke) is made funnier still here with Peter Quince as an irascible prompt. "Devoured!"
What with the fairies' diabolical mischief-making, and the shambolic am-dram of the rude mechanicals, it's not unusual in many productions for the central story of the four lovers to take second or even third place, and feel like an interruption of the fun. Not here, thanks to some excellent acting from this strong quartet, thoroughly engaging with all their youthful impassioned energy. Tam Williams makes a boyish and impatient Lysander and Rachael Stirling is poignant and credible as poor plain Helena, the drama driven by Shakespeare's customary, richly humane sense that we are never so ludicrous, nor so lovable, as when we are in love, and in thrall to the random arrows of the "waggish boy".
Hall writes interestingly in an introduction of how the play is essentially "about marriage, the necessity of it, and how we can learn to be married". And there is another fine touch when Bottom the ass starts to laugh, and it comes out as a harsh bray. His besotted Titania joins in the laughter — again in a harsh, companionable bray, just as married couples do, growing together in habits, tastes, tics, everything.
But Hall also has the lovers portraying love as, emphatically, a compound of the physical as well as the spiritual, visibly panting as they chase after each other, and not just because they're out of breath. Lysander, suddenly in thrall to Helena thanks to Puck's potion, actually starts tearing his clothes off as soon as he sets eyes on her. Indeed, the whole play here seems to be richly mocking Helena's own lofty declaration in Act One, that "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind". On the contrary, love is very much rooted in the earthier emotions, and if it isn't, it won't work out.
As for the rude mechanicals, they're a delight. The last scene, when they finally stage their atrocious play of Pyramus and Thisbe, is genuinely, riotously funny. Oliver Chris shows us as pleasing a Bottom as you'll see this side of Copacabana beach, and Leon Williams is also excellent as Flute playing Thisbe. The whole troupe speak with Birmingham, or possibly Black Country, accents. I don't know whether this is a vague reference to Shakespeare's Warwickshire, but it is somehow funnier still to hear Bottom as a Brum Bum.
Elizabeth Bury is responsible for both set and costume, and achieves great things with the latter, at least. The hard, mirrored court of Athens looks a bit like an East German engineering college, which isn't very inspiring, even when you add shadowy trees and some twinkly stars. But the costumes are terrific, from Dame Judi's bejewelled and regal splendour to Bottom's daft galligaskins. As silly stuff goes, this Midsummer Night's Dream still casts its moonlit magic.
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