A Midsummer Night’s Dream review: an ‘assured’ new staging at the Globe
This production of Shakespeare’s classic ‘doesn’t reinvent the wheel’ but it’s ‘gleeful’

“Many critics sigh at the prospect of yet another ‘Dream’, Shakespeare’s most accessible and most performed play,” said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. Yet for me the play – a “joyful skip through the Athenian forest, packed as it is with errant lovers, mischievous fairies and some joyously bad amateur dramatics” – is usually a delight. And so it proves with Elle While’s “assured” new staging at the Globe, which is “easily the best Shakespeare offering I have seen at this venue in some years”. The largely female cast includes Globe artistic director Michelle Terry as an “exceedingly Puck-ish Puck”, and Mariah Gale as weaver Nicola Bottom (or “Bot-tome”, as this Bottom insists, with her “delusions of actorly grandeur”). Accessible, witty and meaningful, “this is exactly what the Globe should be doing”.
It’s a very funny production, but there’s an “uneasy edge to the gleeful comedy” – which is just as it should be, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. For me, the standout performance comes from Francesca Mills as Hermia. This “vibrant comic actress” has achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, which puts the many “height-related slurs hurled at Hermia, and her rough treatment by the men, in a disturbing new light”. Mills “absolutely makes the part her own”. Overall, the production bowls along at a pleasing pace. And it’s accompanied by a “quite wonderful” five-piece band playing compositions by James Maloney that help evoke “latent menace and a sense of dislocation from reality”.
I would have liked a bit more of that menace and dislocation, said Kate Wyver in The Guardian. Terry gives us a rather unnerving Puck – she looks in her costume like a “creature dragged up from deep beneath the forest floor” – and she comes closest to striking the right balance between glittering humour and “the dark undertones of abused power”. But a bit too often, the comedy in this familiar play “tips over into genial jokes and easy laughter”. It’s a solid and interesting production, rather than a brilliant one, agreed Andrzej Lukowski on Time Out. “It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does have a jolly old time spinning it.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Shakespeare’s Globe, London SE1 (020-7401 9919; shakespearesglobe.com). Until 12 August. Rating ****
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
May 26 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Monday's political cartoons feature Donald Trump's red tie, Hunter Biden's crypto lament, and one meaning of Memorial Day
-
3 tips for coping with financial stress
The explainer Feel more at peace in an unpredictable economy
-
Crossword: May 26, 2025
The Week's daily crossword
-
The cinematic beauty of Sicily's Aeolian Islands
The Week Recommends These scattered islands have inspired film directors since the 1950s
-
6 lounge-ready homes with conversation pits
Feature Featuring a terrazzo-flanked pit in California and a fire-side pit in Nevada
-
Is a River Alive?: a 'powerful synthesis of literature, activism and ethics'
The Week Recommends Robert Macfarlane's latest book centres on his journeys to four river systems around the world
-
Good One: an 'intensely compelling' coming-of-age tale
The Week Recommends India Donaldson's 'quietly devastating' debut feature about a teenage girl's life-changing camping trip
-
The best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta
Feature Marinated turkey wings, a Korean barbecue sauce combo and an off-menu staple
-
Film reviews: Friendship and Fight or Flight
Feature An awkward dad unravels after he's unfriended and Josh Hartnett attempts a John Wick sidestep
-
Art review: Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei
Feature Seattle Art Museum, through Sept. 7
-
Book reviews: 'Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age' and 'Mark Twain'
Feature Navigating pregnancy in the digital age and an exploration of Mark Twain's private life