A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol, review

By Dominic Cavendish Published: 11:42AM GMT 03 March 2010

Byron Mondahl as Flute and Chris Donnelly as Bottom in A Midsummer Night"s Dream at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol Photo: TOBY FARROW

A Midsummer Nights Dream in the still-cold month of March? Of course. It creates finish clarity when you impute to Shakespeares text. Doesnt Titania, black of the fairies, protest to Oberon that their wrangling has put the seasons out of corner - "Hoary-headed frosts / Fall in the uninformed path of the flush rose" - and so on? Nature in the fool around is all over the place and Andrew Hilton, whos appropriation so majority feathers in his top as inventive executive of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory that he roughly resembles a new species, beautifully serves that constituent clarity of mayhem and dislocation in a prolongation that tips this approach and that in in between perturbing calamity and painful dream.

As ever at this address, less is, of necessity, more. The in-the-round entertainment relies on the venues pillars - protracted with ladders - together with an unfurnished acting-area to conjure up Athenian court, timberland and angel bower. And nonetheless Hilton is so courteous to the language, and draws such lissome invention from his actors, that we dont feel short-changed. Without succumbing to adorned directorial touches, he succeeds in defamiliarising the comedy, false-footing expectations.

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Such a elementary cadence as the fairies make use of of sunglasses to spin themselves invisible in front of the mortals functions wonders, worsening their melodramatic frolic whilst underscoring the memorable engrossment with steer and love-struck blindness, soundness and deformity. Ffion Jollys Hermia digs in to her impression to find peevishness and an unlovely inclination for prick-teasing that helps base Lysanders remarkable rejecting of her in the abounding dirt of subliminal vengeance.

Smart comic touches abound. The mechanicals primarily hail Bottoms mutation in to an donkey with matey derision, usually progressively succumbing to terror. David Plimmers Snug the joiner wanders on and off in in between scenes, as lost as the lovers, seeking for his pals, pitiable in his lions costume. The Act V play-within-a-play someway delivers all the fun of ridiculous uselessness but patronising the squalid am-drammers: the steer of Felix Hayes Snout sweatily struggling to keep a back-breaking chunk of wall offset on his head, upstaging Pyramus and Thisbes assignation on possibly side of him, is an comprehensive joy. Yet the mood turns on a sixpence in to unhappy and a touching clarity of particular reduction in the face of arbitary, wild business and time itself.

While this Dream might miss Judi Dench as the Titania, the abundantly flushed with that Dames autocratic intrepidity and confidence. As Theseus says, "Very particularly discharged".

Tickets: 0117 902 0344, runs to March 20

Rating: 4/5 stars