A Midsummer Night's Dream Review

Michael Hoffman moves the play to an Italian village at the turn of the twentieth century and hands half the cast bicycles, a conceit that buys some charming business and costs the forest its menace. Kevin Kline is the reason the thing works at all. His Bottom is a small town fantasist whose humiliation in front of his neighbours gives the comedy an ache it does not usually carry, and the moment after Titania releases him is played straight and lands hard.

Stanley Tucci makes a wry, middle aged Puck. Against them, Rupert Everett and Michelle Pfeiffer speak the verse as though reciting it from a great distance, and their scenes stall. The lovers do better. Calista Flockhart throws herself at Helena's self loathing, Anna Friel is funny and furious, and Bale's Demetrius is mostly asked to be handsome and irritated, which he manages without locating much underneath.

Oliver Stapleton's photography is warm and postcard pretty, and that is the deeper trouble. A play about desire turning cruel in the dark has been lit like a holiday advertisement, and the mud fight between the women is the only stretch that admits any of this hurts.