It must be hellishly difficult to restage this most familiar play in this familiar setting. But Michael Pennington succeeds in this modern-dress production by going back to Shakespearean basics: he puts great emphasis on clarity of speech and on the metaphysical journey all the characters undergo.
You see this most clearly in John Hodgkinson's Theseus and Phillipa Peak's Hippolyta. He, in the performance of the night, starts as a hilariously uptight, brass-balled ex-soldier who tells Philostrate to "stir up the Athenian youth to merriments" as if it were a military diktat. He also signally fails to establish any line of communication with Peak's icily disdainful, dubiously colonised Hippolyta. By the end of the evening, however, they have thawed sufficiently to join with the amateur thesps in a rousing Zorba-like dance.
The lovers have an easier task in that they undergo an obvious transformation in the wood. Pennington sharpens the testy rivalry between the men by making Nick Fletcher's Lysander a smooth charmer and Nicholas Burns's Demetrius a premature fogey in a pinstripe suit. Equally, Claire Redcliffe's volatile Hermia and Victoria Woodward's snitching Helena hardly look as if they would have been best chums at Bedales. Their collective change is matched by that of the mechanicals, who start out as isolated individuals and end up, led by John Conroy's preening, Cowardesque Quince and Peter Forbes's bullish Bottom, as a tatty ensemble whose play is far from contemptible.
Pennington has the most trouble with the fairies. They eerily emerge from and disappear into Paul Farnsworth's fake bushes, and when Joseph Alessi's menacing Puck announces that "night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast", you feel a genuine chill. But he slightly overplays the murderous hostility between Dale Rapley's Oberon and Issy Van Randwyck's Titania: she, in particular, spits out each phrase of the "forgeries of jealousy" speech with such venom that she overlays the vision of natural chaos.
Like the overdone joke about unexpectedly ringing mobile phones - Bottom's even goes off during the Pyramus and Thisbe episode - this is easily rectifiable. What really matters is that Pennington shows how all the characters are "translated" by their adventures in the wood and conveys the play's youthful exuberance. Not having seen a Regent's Park Dream for years, I was also reminded how the genius of the place aids enjoyment to make this a captivating Shakespearean experience.
· In rep until September 6. Box office: 020-7486 2431.
