We are constantly bombarded by American musicals, so it makes a refreshing change to come across this totally English transposition of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Linbury Studio, with music by Howard Goodall and book and lyrics by Charles Hart. As staged by the National Youth Music Theatre, it's vigorous and enjoyable, if a little over-long.
Hart sets the action in a Somerset village during the summer solstice in 1915. Following Shakespeare's plot closely, he gives us absconding lovers, local amdram yokels and bands of woodlanders led by the supernatural Sylvia and Angel. His biggest change is to combine Puck and the boy over whom the fairies quarrel into the single figure of an impish foundling called Jack.
I have just two caveats about this intelligent piece of updating. One is that, unlike Britten and Pears in their operatic version, Hart follows the rhythm of Shakespeare's original too slavishly. The other is that, apart from a silhouetted image of soldiers in the first act finale, there is hardly any reference to the first world war - something that would have had a huge impact on the Somerset youth.
But Goodall, as he showed way back in The Hired Man, has a strong sense of the English musical tradition: here you can trace references to all kinds of composers, from Lionel Bart and Edward German to Sullivan and Elgar. Goodall and Hart also find a different idiom for each of the play's separate groups. The village actors, led by a fusspot vicar, hark back to a simple folk-song tradition. The warring lovers are given a greater melodic and lyrical complexity, especially in a haunting song entitled Jennifer ("I'm obsessive, I'm depressive, I'm impossibly possessive.") And the forest creatures express themselves in music full of shimmering textures, such as the delightful Night and Silence.
At close to three hours, the show feels overextended and the choruses are too packed with words to be fully audible. But the updating works more successfully than in the recent Dawn French-led revival of Shakespeare's play, set during the second world war, and the production combines striking individual performances with a strong sense of ensemble. Jordan Metcalfe's nimbly mischievous Jack clearly projects every syllable, Sian Williams is excellent as the first despised and then ardently pursued Jennifer, and both Aaron Buckingham as the leather-trousered forest king and David Carboni as the Panama-hatted vicar make a decisive mark. Jonathan Gill also leads a good six-strong band in the pit. But the really heartening thing is that Goodall and Hart, unlike some of their contemporaries, draw on native traditions instead of aiming for an ersatz internationalism.
· Until December 29 (020- 7304 4000), then touring.
