If your memories of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are handkerchief-point forest green dresses and flower headbands, be prepared to be amazed. Just be prepared to be amazed anyway. This starkly monochrome production by Holly Race Roughan and the Headlong team blows fresh winds through the Athenian forest as the lovers find their ways to the ends of their journeys.
Staging the play in winter gives greater weight to the changes in the seasons wrought by the battle between the Fairy Queen and King, Titania (Hedydd Dylan) and Oberon (Michael Marcus). Titania tells us “the spring, the summer, / The childing autumn, angry winter, change / Their wonted liveries”. Shakespeare wrote the play during the mid-1590s when England was suffering a run of cold, wet summers that played havoc with agricultural life. This seeming swapping of seasons would have been all too familiar to Shakespeare’s audience. And it has a powerful resonance today as we face the effects of climate change around the world – particularly after one of the wettest Januarys I can remember.
The play opens with Puck (Sergo Vares) – all angles and self-assurance – sitting on a banquet table to casually eat a banana. He is joined by the BSL interpreter, Sarah Cox, who takes up an almost liminal position, fully part of the cast, but unnamed. The monochrome set is echoed in the costumes throughout. The only points of colour are Theseus’s overblown, bemedalled military uniform, Puck’s slightly incongruous red beanie and scarf, and the pale rose cape worn by the changeling child (Pria Kalsi) – she is the root of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania.
Wedding preparations
We find ourselves in Athens where months of preparation are underway for the wedding between Theseus, Duke of Athens (Michael Marcus), and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (Hedydd Dylan). The rude mechanicals of Shakespeare’s play are replaced by a restaurant staffed by a gloriously shouty head chef Nick Bottom (Danny Kirrane), his obsequious maître d’ Peter Quince (Jack Humphrey), and their bustling waitresses.
Theseus and Hippolyta’s celebrations are supposed to be joined by those of Hermia (Tiwa Lade) and Demetrius (Lou Jackson). Hermia is the daughter of a strict Athenian father, Egeus (Jack Humphrey), who insists that she accept the high-status match he has chosen or, in Athenian tradition, choose between the nunnery and death. However, Hermia is in love with Lysander (David Olaniregun) and refuses to bend to her father’s will.
The flight to the forest
Hermia and Lysander hatch a plan to elope and agree to meet in a forest clearing a mile or so from the city. But Hermia confides her plan to her best friend Helena (Tara Tijani), which will prove to be everyone’s undoing. Unknown to Hermia, Helena is hopelessly in love with Demetrius, so she tells him of the plan and they follow the lovers out of the city.
Also heading to the forest are the restaurant team of Peter Quince, Nick Bottom and one of the female staff (Pria Kalsi), who are writing and performing a play for the wedding celebrations and wish their rehearsals to be ‘private’. Their endeavour is much hedged about by the mechanicals’ lack of understanding of how verse works, and continued anxieties that their play should not alarm the ladies.
Oberon’s cunning plan
Oberon has had enough of his arguments with Titania over the changeling child. He calls on his sprite Puck to execute a plan. Puck will drug Titania while she sleeps and make her fall in love with a monstrous sight – the first living thing she sees when she wakes. Puck is brilliantly portrayed, with a strong sense of wicked fun, and sets about his task straight away.
Puck comes across the players in the forest and decides to transform Bottom into an ass. One of the biggest belly laughs of the play is Bottom, as the ass, shouting to Puck’s retreating form: “Is he chuffing laughing at me?” As the rest of the players depart, Titania wakes and the plan works: she falls hopelessly in love.
The best laid plans…
Oberon decides to help Helena and asks Puck to also put the potion into Demetrius’s eyes, to make him fall in love with Helena. But Puck encounters the wrong pair of Athenians sleeping on the grass. He puts the potion in Lysander’s eyes and Lysander awakes in love with Helena. Meanwhile, in an attempt to fix Puck’s mistake, Oberon himself puts the potion in Demetrius’s eyes. Are you keeping up?
Both men are now in love with Helena and Hermia has no one. And Helena thinks the young men are toying with her.
To bring all to a close, Oberon removes the spell from Titania. Humiliated, she gives up the changeling child to him. [The child then disappears from the story entirely, but that’s Shakespeare.] Puck removes the spell from Lysander, who is then back in love with Hermia, and Bottom is returned to his human form.
Wedding celebrations
In the final scene the weddings have taken place and Theseus is awaiting nightfall and the proper celebration of his love with ill grace. The players are called and the play – The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe – is duly performed, with a most dramatic finale.
Roughan’s production is perhaps a darker take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream than some, but it is a wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable performance. There is still time to catch it in Leeds, before the play moves on.
General information
Leeds Playhouse works hard to be an accessible venue for all.
This production by Headlong started its journey at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, before a run at Shakespeare North.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at Leeds Playhouse until 28 February 2026.
Box office: 0113 213 7700, or email info@leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
The tour continues to: Bristol Old Vic: 4–21 March and Oxford Playhouse: 24–28 March 2026.
Content guidance: The production is suitable for ages 12+. It contains loud noises, strong language, scenes of sexual content, drug use and gunshots.
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