Last summer, Shakespeare’s Globe reopened after its pandemic closure with a party-popper version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring water pistols, a piñata donkey and a deliriously funny Pyramus and Thisbe. This summer, the theatre has had a bright idea for its indoor playhouse. What if, a year after the events of that play, the mechanicals were back to perform again for the Duke and Duchess, this time with a show “less tragic, more magic” to celebrate their first anniversary?
Liberating Bottom and co from Shakespeare’s play appeals to my eight-year-old daughter, Hilda, as we make our way there. She has seen the Dream on TV and reckons it’s “more confusing than Diana Wynne Jones”. Aimed at the over-fives, Midsummer Mechanicals is presented by the Globe and Splendid Productions, whose artistic director, Kerry Frampton, is the co-writer (with Ben Hales), co-director (with Lucy Cuthbertson) and an affably silly host as Bottom. With caterpillar eyebrows and bushy sideburns, Frampton makes the young audience feel right at home. Ribbons are tied around the theatre’s pillars and silky bunting hangs across the stage. Although “it’s not very comfy, is it?” mutters Hilda as she gets used to the playhouse’s austere benches.
