You can see how it must have happened. They put all their effort into preparing the gorgeous new playhouse, with its eight-sided auditorium, twin-level galleries and exposed wood still pungent, then they clean forgot about putting on the Shakespeare for which the whole thing was designed.
The pre-show announcements range from the incompetent to the panicked, half the actors have gone awol and it is touch and go whether the performance will happen. They have to think on their feet. The head of security gets drafted in to play Bottom, the waiter who has just cleared my plates in the cafe volunteers as Hippolyta and somehow I end up playing the bongos (sorry, people).
The spirit of anarchy is alive in this galvanising production by Matthew Dunster and Jimmy Fairhurst, co-produced by Warrington’s Not Too Tame and Newcastle’s Northern Stage. It blurs the line between foyer and auditorium just as the play makes a fuzzy distinction between dream and reality.
We are in a place where Louise Haggerty’s Puck, with her parka and pizza box, can share a stage with the bright young things of Athens and their beautiful ivory costumes. The show is as happy incorporating modern-day colloquialisms as it is making use of BSL (deliberate mistranslations and all). No wonder the actors keep forgetting they are in a play.
It is very funny – and inventive enough to find new laughs in the mechanicals, Bottom (Jimmy Fairhurst) chief among them. It also has a raucous feminist heart. Hermia and Helena (Rebecca Hesketh Smith and Kate James) reject the platitudes about women not being able to “fight for love as men may do”, their gutsy performances setting the pace for Demetrius and Lysander (Tyler Dobbs and William Grint). In a darker turn, Hippolyta (Yazmin Kayani) holds out against a loveless and abusive marriage.
Bringing in David Morrissey as Oberon was a smart move; using him only as a voiceover less so. Nadine Shah is stately and mysterious as Titania but in his absence, their relationship is hard to fathom. But that is a rare misstep in a boisterous and intelligent show that sets the Shakespeare North Playhouse confidently on its way with a declaration of love, transformation and possibility.
• At Shakespeare North Playhouse until 22 October and Northern Stage, Newcastle, 29 October–12 November.
