MICHAEL GRANDAGE COMPANY A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM MICHAEL GRANDAGE COMPANY

THE LOVERS Hermia (Susannah Fielding), Helena (Katherine Kingsley) Lysander (Sam Swainsbury) and Demetrius (Stefano Braschi) 

Titania Oberon/ Theseus Puck/ philostrate Bottom

Setting “Christopher Oram's set for the enchanted wood, where most of the play takes place, is magical. A large, full supermoon dominates the backdrop whilst the forest is full of grandiose decay with smashed crystal chandeliers on the ground, and a damaged cast iron ornate spiral staircase winding up into the trees.” “This West End staging is both "ancient and new, erotic but innocent, un-pretty but beautiful", says Libby Purves in The Times.

Michael Billington The Guardian, “Ever since the Polish critic, Jan Kott, wrote a famous essay viewing Shakespeare's play as a nightmarish fantasy, directors have been exploring the dark side of The Dream. Michael Grandage's new production – the fourth in his current West End season – takes the opposite tack.” “I've suppose I've seen more textually exploratory Dreams, but Grandage's production is sexy, swift and sure-footed, a constant delight to the eye and never lets us forget that this is a play about the magical capacity for change.” “Built around the star-power of Sheridan Smith and David Walliams, this is an enormously spirited and fast-moving show that turns into a joyous celebration of sex and fertility.” “In a play all about transformation, one of the production's best internal jokes is the shift that overcomes Walliams's Bottom. As one of the rude mechanicals, he is a campy amateur thesp in a chestnut-coloured Frankie Howerd wig who gleefully paws the breasts of his fellow actor, Francis Flute. Transformed into a buck-toothed, big-eared ass, Walliams turns into a figure of polymorphous sexuality who delights equally in Titania's lascivious embraces and the well-filled honeybag of a hairy fairy.”

CRITICS’ REVIEWS “Writhing around with her band of spliff-smoking playboy pixies, Smith excels as the mythical forest’s lusty empress, devouring her bucktoothed bedfellow Bottom.” - Time Out, London “Enormously spirited show that turns into a joyous celebration of sex and fertility” says Michael Billington in The Guardian “Walliams’s early scenes are spun through with an outlandish egomania combined with a suggestion that he and actor-writer Peter Quince are an item.” Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail gave the play a five star review calling it "a fine dream". "This production catches the Sybaritic jollity, the vivid vim of the Dream. Even in autumnal London you catch a taste of midsummer," he said. “The lovers’ messy, tear-stained fighting is packed with humour; as Hermia and Helena are touching in their confusion, providing genuinely warm moments where Walliams’s crew and Puck and his fairies do not.” - Londonist