Reviews of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre in London

"I can't remember enjoying a Dream more"

"Nicholas Hytner’s acrobatic, erotic, playfully queered version of Shakespeare’s Dream seems even more delightful now than it was in 2019. It’s a fully immersive show, with audience members in the Bridge’s hi-tech pit (there are seats too) swirling around action at ground level and on raised rostra but also gazing up at bodies twisting and flexing in silk slings up in the air. It’s beautifully staged and acted, thought provoking, technically brilliant, and ends up with a party. Seriously, what’s not to like?"

"bawdy, uninhibited mischief... comedy-gold cast of magical characters"
"Shenanigans reign in this neck of the woods. Nicholas Hytner’s rollicking production of Shakespeare’s great comedy feasts on bawdy mischief and aerial antics."

"The immersive setup brings the audience into the midst of the play’s shapeshifting unreality among a comedy-gold cast of magical characters"

"Turbo-charged and full of surprises"

Nicholas Hytner’s production has spectacular storytelling, exuberant performances and tunes by Beyoncé and Dizzee Rascal"

"Is this the most romantic Dream you will ever see? No, its exertion of its magic is free-ranging but too turbo-charged to make room for much true tenderness. Yet from the wowing aerialism of Puck and the other fairies to the big bursts of Beyoncé and Dizzee Rascal, from the pop-culture quips to the rising and falling of the platforms the cast perform on — and between which the standing portion of the audience stand — Hytner and his designer Bunny Christie keep the ideas coming and the spectacle slick. Never mind Hytner’s 12 years running the National Theatre — he is also the showman who once got a life-sized helicopter to land on stage in Miss Saigon, remember."

"Joyous and sprightly as ever"

"Exhilarating revival ... Hytner’s semi-immersive production... is endlessly playful"

"It returns as joyous and sprightly as ever, but its impish embrace of alternative loves and lifestyles feels more weighted than it did, as does its robust rejection of oppressive patriarchal power."

"It’s endlessly playful, gently queered and often very funny.

But it’s the skill with which Hytner, designer Bunny Christie and movement director Arlene Phillips enfold the audience in the world of the play that brings home its more serious points about freedom and the transforming power of love. By wrapping the seating around a huge central pit where standing spectators are scooped up into the action, they make palpable the slide from cruel, cold Athens into the dreamlike, moonlit woods. Here the outer world of the forest and mysterious terrain of the subconscious become as one."

"exuberant celebration of the transforming joys of both love and theatre"

"Acrobatic splendour and joy "

"Fizzy, gymnastic revival of the Shakespearean classic is irresistible"

"Performers dangle above the stage from silks, cutting astonishing shapes imagined by choreographer Arlene Phillips and circus captain Lennin Nelson-McClure. Puck’s (David Moorst’s) witticisms while hanging upside down from one ankle are mesmeric; when a troupe of fairies somersault mid-air during a Beyoncé song, it’s cheer-inducing."

"Here is a revival whose acrobatic splendour and joy factor resoundingly justifies its return."

"
Nicholas Hytner’s riotously OTT ‘Dream’ is just as much fun the second time around"

"Nicholas Hytner’s exuberant 2019 take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply too much fun to leave to the history books: what a joy it is to have it back."

"If you’re not cooing at the virtuoso staging you’ll be gawping at the circus work or goggling at who is kissing who. And if all else fails, it ends with three giant inflatable moons dropped into the auditorium for us to pummel around. Not Hytner’s most meticulous hour, but you’d have to be dead not to enjoy it."

"A Midsummer Night’s Dream is back in delirious splendour"

"Nicholas Hytner’s immersive, high-flying Shakespeare swings into town again with less novelty, perhaps, but still plenty of ardour"

"Such a lively, interactive staging was clearly designed to engender the kind of fomo that drives a younger crowd to buy tickets. And it seems to work. Half the pleasure of the evening is in witnessing the rapturous reactions of those with standing tickets who mix with the actors in the middle. Many seem genuinely struck with wonder as the story unfolds around them."

"... acrobatics and pop-up platforms are as conventional today as the proscenium arch and French windows once were."

"What does work very well, running alongside all the beguiling glitter and eroticism, is the true handling of the play’s central argument about what will last in human memory, whether that’s a dream, a love affair or a play. This is, as a result, a happy show that manages to seem newly naughty while honouring the original subversive thrust."