The presence of David Walliams and Sheridan Smith has ensured plenty of advance buzz for this fourth instalment of director Michael Grandage’s five-show season at the Noël Coward Theatre. True to expectation, both are good value in a fast-moving production.
Amid a haze of spliff smoke and Sixties music, this interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedy invokes the spirit of Burning Man, the hedonistic festival that takes place every August in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Most of the characters seem to be wildly garbed hippies or chiselled dreamboats: some could have walked straight off the set of the musical Hair, while others cavort in crisp white underpants.
As Hippolyta, ruler of the Amazons, Smith looks like an extra from Mad Men. But once the action moves to the chaotic forest it’s a different story, as she brings both bohemian vigour and effortless charm to Titania, the queen of the fairies.
Meanwhile, Walliams plays Bottom, the hapless weaver temporarily endowed with the head of an ass. It’s a crowd-pleasing performance: this Bottom could be a refugee from Little Britain.
At first he is a mincing theatrical wannabe in an auburn wig. Later he metamorphoses into a goofy creature whose sleepy manner can’t hide the fact that he is a sexual glutton. Walliams’s rapport with the audience is strong, yet sometimes there’s too heavy a whiff of nudge-nudge comedian Frankie Howerd, as though he might at any moment urge us on with an absurd "Titter ye not".
Around the stars there is slightly uneven work. Katherine Kingsley’s Helena and Susannah Fielding’s Hermia squabble entertainingly. Gavin Fowler is a lithe Puck (albeit looking as if he has overdosed on power yoga), and Richard Dempsey makes a keen impression as the fumblingly aspirational Peter Quince. But Pádraic Delaney, who doubles as Theseus and Oberon, doesn’t stamp his authority on the roles.
Christopher Oram’s design is a highlight, transforming from stately mansion into misty moonscape. Yet while the play’s dreamy quality is well realised, there’s not much sense of its darkness, and even in its sexier moments there is an air of efficiency rather than passion. This is a spirited and populist account of a perennial favourite, but it lacks magic.
Until November 16 (0844 482 5141, michaelgrandagecompany.com)
