A Midsummer Night's Dream review, Noel Coward Theatre

If you like David Walliams, which I sort of do - partly because I love the way he sexually embarrasses Simon Cowell on BGT - his appearance as Bottom the weaver in an otherwise unmoving production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is unquestionably the high point. Walliams has such a strong persona, it's impossible for him to be anyone but himself. His Bottom is camp, ungainly, charming, looming, apparently stupid and always a little wicked; more so, obviously, when he is transformed into an ass to sexually arouse and discredit the fairy queen, Titania.

Fairies and bewitchment dominate the landscape in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When the fairy king, Oberon, decides to humiliate his wife in a row over a foundling boy, he sends his batman, Puck, into the forest with a magic herb. Squeezed onto the eyelids of sleepers, the herb ensures they fall in love with the first person seen on waking. So it is that Titania seizes upon Bottom when she sees him alongside in an ass's head and tail, braying stupidly; meanwhile, the human lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius are tricked into falling in and out of love with the wrong people.

Bewitched bothered and bewildered

A Midsummer Night's Dream should be magical and above all, very funny. Michael Grandage's production is neither. Everything happens at such a lick, there's no time to establish characters. Sheridan Smith as Titania is like a louche, blond, Elizabeth Taylor. Oberon and Puck barely make a mark. The rude mechanicals - the dramatic troupe of workmen, which includes Bottom - get more of a show than the others, but they feel tacked onto the story rather than integral to it. Levity is sacrificed for brevity.

In conclusion: Grandage company productions boast star casts that put bums on seats - though quite a few seats emptied at the interval. The cost of the actors seems to have affected the spend on the set. It was ugly, unimaginative, badly lit (from Row P) and uninspiring: an ironic reflection of the whole experience.

References
Grandage Company, Tickets


Noel Coward Theatre, 85-88 St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4AU  Run ends 16 November.