They say that if you can remember the 1960s you weren't really there. Alternatively, you might have been in Greece, where the military junta that seized power in 1967 ruthlessly suppressed the counter-culture and regarded hippies as enemies of the state.
David Thacker's production opens in a joyless Athens, where a group of sour-faced colonels have brutally overturned the cradle of democracy. Rob Edwards's Theseus is a decorated despot who does not propose to marry Hippolyta so much as annexe her; while Hermia's choice of death or exile if she refuses to obey her father carries a real sense of threat.
Yet something is stirring outside the city, where the military junta is magically transformed into Sergeant Pepper and his band, and a quartet of young people conduct an experiment in free love aided by mind-altering substances. It's a metaphor so obvious it seems surprising no one has thought of it before, but Thacker's concept fits the play like a velvet glove over an iron fist.
It isn't quite seamless: some of the performances are uneven, while the luminous balls that get under everyone's feet are a distraction that may have been better left in the rehearsal room. But Vanessa Kirby gives a performance of statuesque distinction as Helena, with an idiomatic command of the verse that makes Shakespeare sound as hip as Adrian Henri.
Thacker takes an enlightened approach to casting: Kiruna Stamell has a major impact as a miniature, tap-dancing Mustardseed, and Laurence Clark is an established comedian, who has cerebral palsy, making his theatrical debut, yet his wheelchair-assisted Wall is indeed "the wittiest partition that I ever heard discourse".
Until 6 March. Box office: 01204 520661.
