'A madcap riot'

Well, those might not have been the actual words, but that was the gist of a review of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre's latest production, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's the sort of description guaranteed to strike fear into the soul of someone like me - I sit through their farces and near-farces, more often than not grim-faced and with folded arms.  I console myself with the thought that surely you can get a return from something you hate and that sees two hours of your life trickling away from you forever, just as you can from a really enjoyable production.  If nothing else, it gives you a benchmark for dire, and that must be worth something?  So I approached this whacky fun in a reasonably negative frame of mind - chalk it up to experience, I thought. 

I couldn't have been more wrong.  It was brilliantly good fun, both true to the original and wildly original in itself, and I cannot remember the last time I laughed so constantly at a play - my face ached as we left, and we spent our walk through town smiling broadly and exchanging quotes and chortling happily.  If that makes us sound like a bunch of idiots, that can't be helped.  Not everything quite worked out - the music, or at least some of the singing, was, um, variable - but there was that feeling that this production got to the heart of what the play is about.  I've seen attempts at the madness and mayhem before, but not truly realised what they were at, and probably just sat through those sections waiting for them to end. 

It's only on for another week - go see, and do your own chortling.