It’s no disrespect to the generally fine ensemble acting of the cast, or their finery, to say you’ll notice the set first. Lucy Osborne, who also did the costumes, gives us a backdrop of a stylised sun and an almost bare stage adorned at one point with a beautiful plethora of planet-like spheres, and at another with a forest of ladders, around which the confused lovers chase each other. This strikes me as an oblique reference to Peter Brook’s stark, groundbreaking Dream from 1970: if so, the show wears it lightly.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Barbican: intelligent, witty and visually dazzling
