How do you freshen up a play which is revived almost every summer at Shakespeare’s Globe? Do it in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in the middle of winter. Directors Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat turn what is usually a summery froth of fairies and lovers into a crisp and frosty fairytale, a kind of sexed-up Narnia, twisting a Grimm story out of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays.
Sergo Vares’s Puck sets the tone: in a black tutu and white face make up he stares down the audience as he slowly eats a banana. It’s creepy. There’s a gleaming white set, where a white banquet table is laid for a banquet by staff in black and white livery. These servants - executive chef Nick Bottom, head butler Peter Quince - become the Rude Mechanicals, as Roughan lightly picks up on the class divide between the poor actors and the noble lovers who deride them.
