QUENTIN LETTS: First night review of A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Noel Coward Theatre
Rating:
Shakespeare's Bottom is usually done as a self-regarding ‘hempen homespun’, a Warwickshire mechanical with too much to say for himself. Little Britain star David Walliams, naturally, has a camper take.
He makes Bottom a lisping Herbert, all cravat and pink shirt and thrown head gestures. He skips off stage holding hands with his amateur-theatricals boyfriend Peter Quince (Richard Dempsey).
A liberty with the Bard? Nope. It is a terrific idea: funny, fresh (ooh – fresh indeed) and rather endearing. It certainly makes sense of that name Shakespeare gives him.

Humorously sexy: Sheridan Smith as fairy queen Titania

This is a fine Dream. Mr Walliams co-stars with the constantly, impertinently, humorously sexy Sheridan Smith, whose Titania falls in love with Bottom when he is a donkey.
Miss Smith has a set of eyebrows that seem constantly a-quiver, as though she has just been shown something the size of a prize marrow.
At this point Mr Walliams is wearing a pair of equine teeth which make him resemble the fictitious Australian cultural attaché, Sir  Les Patterson.
At other moments this Bottom reminded me of Frankie Howerd (is Mr Walliams not quite possibly Frankie’s reincarnation?).
Miss Smith, curvaceously slinky and with that very English impishness, could be a modern-day Diana Dors – before she started overdoing it on the cream puffs and Gordon’s gin.
Michael Grandage, London’s most reliable director, serves up a Dream which flashes plenty of flesh. The male lovers, Lysander (Sam Swainsbury) and Demetrius (Stefano Braschi) have the looks and limbs of Calvin Klein underpant models. They duly strip to their smalls. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream teaser trailer

This production catches the Sybaritic jollity, the vivid vim of the Dream

They and their bronzed girlfriends Hermia (Susannah Fielding) and a voracious Helena (Katherine Kingsley) bask in orange lighting front-of-stage.
This contrasts with greys and blues to the back where a vast, beguiling moon burns in the midsummer night’s sky. The fairy scenes (I mean in Titania’s court) are brushed with 1970s-style flower-power love songs.
Gavin Fowler’s Puck keeps  showing off his lithe torso – this show has more six-packs than Threshers. Miss Smith is done up  in a Toyah Willcox hairdo. Cleavage is provided.
The mechanicals’ play within a play has been done with more slapstick. A purist might want crisper diction from Miss Smith, though one would not want to sacrifice any of the show’s cantering pace.
This production catches the Sybaritic jollity, the vivid vim of the Dream. Even in autumnal London you catch a taste of midsummer.