A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream was the per­fect pick for Sum­mer Shake­speare, tra­di­tion­al­ly held in the Dell in Welling­ton’s Botan­i­cal Gar­dens at night in the mid­dle of sum­mer, but then the pro­duc­tion moved to the base­ment the­atre at Te Whaea in New­town, and things piv­ot­ed from the usu­al. It was odd not to be sit­ting on scratchy dry grass, grad­u­al­ly get­ting cold­er and cold­er in Welling­ton’s night air as the show pro­gressed, and instead watch­ing from the front row of a ros­trum in a con­crete base­ment, play­ers mere feet from my face, but it was a good time all the same.

‘Things piv­ot­ing from the usu­al’ is an apt descrip­tion for this iter­a­tion of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, direct­ed by Shane Bosh­er, straight from anoth­er direct­ing gig at Cir­ca. With queer­ing of the sto­ry, con­sid­er­able amounts of neon, and many meta moments, it’s cer­tain­ly not your usu­al.

Auto­crat­ic and tyran­ni­cal Duke of Athens, The­seus (Hamish Boyle), is get­ting ready for his polit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient mar­riage to Queen of the Ama­zons, Hip­poly­ta (Sara Dou­glas), when their com­pa­ny is inter­rupt­ed by Egeus (Phil Pele­ton), Her­mi­a’s father, who demands that she mar­ry Demetrius (Matthew Stai­jen-Leach), a beloved sort, instead of the man she loves, Lysander (Andrew Clarke). The­seus presents Her­mia (Aimee Sul­li­van), with an impos­si­ble choice. She must either mar­ry Demetrius, or be put to death. Forced to flee into the woods, Her­mia and Lysander, as well as Demetrius and Helenus (Dryw McArthur) — who’s mad­ly in love with Demetrius already — run into some quar­relling fairies, get dosed with an aphro­disi­ac, and real­ly, the chaos starts there.

The fairies who live in the woods — Queen Oberon (Grace Hoet) and Queen Tita­nia (Cather­ine Zul­ver) — are squab­bling over triv­ial mat­ters. Oberon seeks revenge by send­ing her delight­ful hench­fairy Puck (Ari­adne Bal­tazar) to fetch the afore­men­tioned aphro­disi­ac and drip it in Tita­ni­a’s eyes when she sleeps, con­found­ing her to fall in love with the first thing she sees when she wakes.

On the oth­er side of the woods, a group of Mechan­i­cals are try­ing to put on a play suit­able for The­seus and Hip­poly­ta’s wed­ding. It does­n’t go espe­cial­ly well. More on that lat­er.

What imme­di­ate­ly strikes me about this per­for­mance is the sheer sense of fun it has. The char­ac­ters leap from the page, blaz­ing bright in front of our eyes, and the ener­gy from the per­form­ers does­n’t let up for the cou­ple of hours we’re in the space. I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the fight scenes — the piv­otal con­fronta­tion between Helenus, Her­mia, Demetrius and Lysander being a par­tic­u­lar favourite — where all four per­form­ers enact incred­i­ble com­pli­cat­ed chore­og­ra­phy and throw their entire selves (quite lit­er­al­ly) into it.

The set­ting is mod­ern, a under­ground club per­haps, and while I would have loved to have seen this play staged out­doors, the vibe makes sense. In the city, all kinds of colour­ful weird­ness goes down in the wee small hours of night, after all, and in the inti­ma­cy of this the­atre, we feel a part of the action.

While I found immense enjoy­ment in watch­ing this show and all those who per­formed with­in it, I’d like to make a spe­cial men­tion of the Mechan­i­cals. The offi­cious Petra Quince (Char­lotte Dodd), over­in­flat­ed Bot­tom (James Bayliss), bash­ful Snug (David Bow­ers-Mason), spir­it­ed Flute (Jake Brown), and like­able Snout (Lucy McCarthy) and Starveling (Rose­mary Lewis) bring so much joy to the piece, play­ing their roles with a recog­nis­able am-dram charm. We’ve all been there. The Mechan­i­cals might­n’t be nat­ur­al-born per­form­ers, but they’re damn well going to give it a good go, and their per­for­mance of Pyra­mus and This­be at the end of the show is over-enthu­si­as­tic and full of hilar­i­ty, cul­mi­nat­ing in an epic death scene, com­plete with ‘dag­gers’ and water guns.

Those in love in this play, for the most part, have good chem­istry, and I do appre­ci­ate the cast­ing of Dryw McArthur as a male Helenus (as opposed to Hele­na, from the orig­i­nal script), and Grace Hoet as a female Oberon. Queer­ing a play like this works incred­i­bly well, and allows for a more mod­ern explo­ration of some of the rela­tion­ships, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the set­ting.

I do won­der a lit­tle about the cross-cast­ing of Helenus (Hele­na), how­ev­er. McArthur’s play­ing of Helenus is very strong, quick-wit­ted and clever, and he’s incred­i­bly enjoy­able to watch, but I do still won­der about the cross-cast­ing.

It’s an inter­est­ing choice when so few women in this play­ing hit the mark find­ing the auton­o­my they so clear­ly seek — The­seus clear­ly holds the pow­er in Athens over Hip­poly­ta (despite her being the Queen of the Ama­zons, come on), and the sheer amount of male lovers draw the eye often more so than Her­mia — that it feels a lit­tle bit unfor­tu­nate to lose such a strong-willed woman from the text. How­ev­er, I sup­pose the inclu­sion of a female Oberon and a female Quince did help bal­ance the piece out some­what. The cross-cast­ing, and the sub­se­quent queer­ing of the piece helps the play find the moder­ni­ty it needs, and for the most part, I did appre­ci­ate it.

What wor­ries me about the play­ing of this piece is the con­fu­sion around con­sent. Per­haps Demetrius’ infat­u­a­tion with Helenus at the end of the play would have been fine at the time of writ­ing, but think­ing of it these days leaves a an unsa­vory taste in the mouth. Near the end of the play, Puck removes the love potion from Lysander, so he’ll only care for Her­mia once again. Puck does­n’t, how­ev­er, remove the potion from Demetrius — as is true in the orig­i­nal text — and Demetrius and Helenus get mar­ried, with Demetrius’ infat­u­a­tion with Helenus seem­ing­ly only dri­ven by the potion he’s under. This isn’t ide­al for our mod­ern stage, and it is espe­cial­ly not ide­al with the queer­ing of this rela­tion­ship. Is Demetrius bisex­u­al, or is his love for Helenus only drawn from the potion? Does he tru­ly care for him, or is it just coer­cion? Does this rela­tion­ship work beyond the pages of the script?

Per­haps this was the direc­tor’s inten­tion — Dream does fea­ture a spec­trum of depic­tions of love/“love” — from the unyield­ing, unbreak­able bond Her­mia and Lysander have, to the bit­ter-tast­ing thing that has The­seus and Hip­poly­ta — it could be a meta take. How­ev­er,  it reads uncom­fort­ably, and could have eas­i­ly be reme­died with tiny alter­ations to the script, or dif­fer­ent non-ver­bal play­ing of the rela­tion­ship between the char­ac­ters. Helenus says, “The more I love, the more he hateth me,” and was Demetrius of sound mind and will, it seems like that’d still be true at the end of the piece.

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is a glo­ri­ous cel­e­bra­tion of one of Shake­speare’s great come­dies — blend­ing meta, moder­ni­ty and music with the glit­ter and glam of a night out. It’s well worth a watch, if you can stom­ach the uncom­fort­able moments that occa­sion­al­ly crop up.