A Midsummer Night's Dream review: Gwendoline Christie rules in irreverent comedy at the Bridge Theatre

Nicholas Hytner’s promenade production of Julius Caesar was the hit of last year’s programme at this newish Tower Bridge venue. Now he repeats the formula, with an inventive staging of Shakespeare's slippery comedy. Poking fun at the vogue for immersive theatre while also embracing the genre’s potential for frenetic playfulness and immediacy, it’s funny, sexy and romantic.

At the outset we’re left in no doubt that its setting, Athens, is an austere place. Gwendoline Christie is Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, and she’s trapped inside a glass case ⁠— the prisoner of a very stern Theseus. There are shades of The Handmaid’s Tale, and the mood is sober.

But then David Moorst’s acrobatic and extravagantly camp Puck uncorks his magic potion. We’re propelled into a realm of fairies and fantasy ⁠— conjured up in unapologetically crowd-pleasing style, with Arlene Phillips as movement director and a soundtrack that includes Beyoncé and Dizzee Rascal.

In a reversal of convention, it’s Oliver Chris’s Oberon rather than his wife Titania who falls for Bottom, the weaver who’s ingloriously crowned with an ass’s head. The result is a vision of transgressive passion, realised with technical wizardry. Lovers tumble in and out of beds that rise from the floor, actors turn somersaults on silk swings, and stage crew whoosh scenery through the audience.

In a fine ensemble, Kit Young impresses as a guitar-strumming Lysander and Isis Hainsworth makes a fiery, defiant Hermia. But the pick of the bunch is Hammed Animashaun, a master of big-hearted comic nonsense as Bottom.

There are some overblown moments, yet this irreverent interpretation has the atmosphere of a party. It’s best experienced as a groundling in the theatre’s pit, where the sense of mischief spreads like a giant smile.

Until Aug 31 (0333 320 0051, bridgetheatre.co.uk)