There’s an uneasy edge to the gleeful comedy of Elle While’s production of Shakespeare’s play. Quite right too. Though often rolled out as a merry romp, this is a story of romantic derangement and control, in which the Fairy King, Oberon, drugs and dupes his partner into having sex with an animal.
The darkness never overwhelms the comedy in While’s staging but it’s always there. The story’s Lord of Misrule, Puck, is played by the Globe’s artistic director Michelle Terry as an ambivalent figure, charming but also frightening, who lurches screaming from the ground with a green mask of a face and a matted crown of twigs.
