Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Everyman Theatre, Liverpool

I have to confess to having a bit of a love-hate relationship with A Midsummer Night's Dream. On the face of it, it has many of the elements of Shakespearean comedy that I adore: mistaken identities, lovers at cross-purposes, laughs and a threat of violence that is extinguished by the close of the play. Yet, in comparison to masterpieces such as Twelfth Night, with the melancholia of Viola, the  foolishness of Malvolio and the jaded Feste, and Much Ado About Nothing, with the verbal sparring of a well-matched Beatrice and Benedick, I find A Midsummer Night's Dream somewhat insubstantial. To choose A Midsummer Night's Dream as the play with which to renew my acquaintance with the Everyman, demolished and rebuilt since I last attended a play there (the ever excellent David Morrissey's Macbeth), might, therefore, seem somewhat foolish. Yet this interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream did not disappoint, and instead showed what the play can be: an utter delight. That it was so has to be to the credit of both the director's vision and the cast's ability to actualise that vision. Darker than normal, and funnier too, this A Midsummer Night's Dream was a pleasure to watch and the three hours flew by.

This version of the play really is a play of two halves, with the first focusing on the main relationships plot, whilst the second provides the light relief by focusing almost exclusively on the performance of the Mechanicals play. In this way, the play provides its audience with shade then light, as the first half focuses its attention on the various dysfunctional relationships to be found within the Athenian state. Under the direction of Nick Bagnall, no relationship within the play is left untouched by discord of some sort and the audience is left under no illusion that about the fragility of the relationships that have been formed by the close of the play. The second half focuses much more extensively on a section of the play that is usually its weakest: the Mechanicals play. Fortunately for Bagnall, in Dean Nolan, who plays Bottom, and on whom the comic element of the play singlehandedly depends, the play has a gem. Nolan's Bottom is larger than life - from his first lines, what sprang to my mind was that in appearance, sound and spirit, Nolan brought to mind Brian Blessed, an impression I know from overhearing conversation during the interval that other theatregoers had as well. The sheer physical energy and agility that he brought to the role was impressive and by the close of the play, Nolan's Bottom has transcended the role assigned to his part - the comic relief in the play's sub-plot - and become the play's star performance.

A Midsummer Night's Dream concludes tomorrow, 18th April 2015, at the Everyman in Liverpool.