'David Evans Rees' staging takes up wherer Peter Brook's groundbreaking, avant garde production at Straford in 1970 left off: performing in a set consisting of a three-sided white box hung with trapezes, the actors present a heavilly sexualised vison of the Bard's faerie world... no, of course it doesn't: this is open air, summer Shakespeare - unimpeachably traditional and safe, performed in period costume against a verdant bank in a park, with the voices of the performers intermittantly lost in the soughing of the wind and the buzz of the air traffic overhead (what are all those helicopters doing hovering over Greenwhich?).

And it's very agreeable, even when it rains (they hand out umbrellas). Running at just under 2 hours, this is a lean mini-Dream that focuses tighty on the central love-square of the amorously confused Athenians Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander.

The various transformations are handled lighhtly and wittly, and the final play within the play of Pyramus and Thisbe presented at court by Peter Quince's artisans, is smartly despatched.

One trick the production does borrow from Brook is to have actors double in the roles of Thesus and Oberon, and Hippolyta and Titania (Martin Ritchie and Katerina Jugati respectively ).

But there are definitely no trapeses - which is perhaps just as well, since Gordon Ridout's wheezing, endearingly uneathereal Puck doesn't look like the sirt of impish fairy attendant who would be comfortable taking to the air.

Time Out August 17-24 2005
Review by Robert Shore

Of Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the most obviously comic and among the best suited to a summer picnic production in the park.

Lord Strange’s Men, which takes its name from the company believed to have been the first to employ William Shakespeare, draws out the delightful comedy, though not the deepest nuances of a play that can imply far more than the joy and emotional maturity of a hard-won happy ending.

But if Evans Rees’ straightforward, well-paced direction does not deliver the most resonant production, it entertained even a child in the audience who, before the action began, had reduced the plot to 'something about donkeys'.

The ‘donkey’ steals the show. Bottom, as played by Ralf Collie, brings to life the character’s endearing vanity and absurd self-belief and conveys his great redeeming feature that he can throw himself into any part, even that of an ass.

Ellie Fitzhenry as Helena and Claire Brine as Hermia bring painful, romantic confusion to an uproarious crescendo, while their embarrassed beaux Lysander (Chris Rogers) and Demetrius (Giles Alderson) gaze on. These mere mortals are out-ranked by the relative gravity of Martin Ritchie as Theseus/Oberon and Katerina Judati as Hippolyta/Titania, whose seniority is established by her grey hair, but does not detract from her sensuality.

Straddling the two worlds and laughing at both is Gordon Ridout’s schoolboyish Puck, who, like the children in the audience, is blissfully immune to the emotional awakening of the other characters in the Dream.

The Stage 12 August 2005
Review by Barbara Lewis
/www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/9124/a-midsummer-nights-dream