THEATRE: Something in the air

A Midsummer Night's Dream Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London

Say what you like about the theatre in Regent's Park (that it's there to justify regretted hamper purchases, perhaps, or that it's a drop- in health farm for people who want to shiver off a few calories), it does have one highly floggable asset: namely, the sky. As dusk turns to night and the stage-lighting starts pulling in the midges, the mutable relation between spectators and actors is given palpable, minute-by-minute emphasis. A Midsummer Night's Dream seems custom-built for this space, operating as it does in a sort of dramatic twilight, by turns craving derision and sympathy for men and women who, in their own different ways, make complete asses of themselves.

If Rachel Kavanaugh's debut New Shakespeare mainstage production has a fault, it is that it doesn't always strike this balance. The tone established in the opening scene - when the Athenian mechanicals pop up from behind David Knapman's ivy-clad ruined chapel set to politely clap their new queen Hippolyta - is one of self-conscious theatricality. The costumes - the court's Victorian Sunday-best versus fairyland's rock-opera purple leggings and tutus - look more like bargains from a fancy dress shop than a bold period conceit. Delivered in a cream-coloured summer suit, Theseus's threat to have Hermia put to death if she doesn't marry Demetrius - the patriarchal rod that hangs heavy over the play - sounds faintly ridiculous. It's hardly surprising that the two young women, who bear the emotional brunt of the flower-crazed affections in the forest, seem to take things so lightly. Issy van Randwyck's Helena scrunches her face into affected expressions of wounded pride before skipping off without a care in the world; Claire Carrie's Hermia is an indignant petite just waiting to be bundled around the stage like a naughty spaniel. Helena's potentially moving outburst against Hermia for rending the "double cherry" of their childhood friendship is here played as sick-making sorority, at which we are invited to groan.

But it would be churlish to find too much fault in a staging that goes in such exuberant pursuit of comedy - and sexual chemistry. Having sat through productions that made me question whether Dream wasn't written just to prove that the English can never let their hair down, even at their midsummer maddest, it's refreshing to see such abandonment to the god of gag. In Ian Talbot and John Padden, Kavanaugh has got pretty much the best for both worlds: Talbot's Bottom is a lovingly detailed Northern show-off, attention-stealing without up-staging his wonderfully oddball fellow labourers; Padden's Puck is a lean, agile mischief-maker, jaw permanently set in a manic grin. Whereas Puck tries to mount everything in sight, Bottom, transformed by a Disney-cute mask, swivels his hips like a middle- aged bank manager impressing the ladies at an office party.

Repeat echoes and more use of purple than a Silk Cut ad cannot, let's be honest, summon up an atmosphere of supernatural hocus-pocus. Playing Oberon as a swarthy malevolent adds little either - the fairy king's tears on realising that his abuse of Titania has gone too far seem as forced as those Bottom's Pyramus achieves by applying raw onions to his eyes. But this Dream does enchant. Whether that's finally to do with the subconscious effect of rustling leaves and unexpected breezes or the performances, who can say for sure. That's why it's on here, after all.

Booking: 0171-486 2431. In rep