Shakespeare’s magical comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the latest play in the Octagon season to be directed by the Artistic Director, David Thacker, who won a brace of Olivier Awards for his RSC production of Pericles twenty years ago.

The Sergeant Pepper-influenced publicity flags up a Swinging Sixties theme, so it’s surprising to find the auditorium initially awash with sombre army uniforms and Che Guevara-style propaganda posters - a nod to the very un-swinging military dictatorship which seized power in Athens in 1967.

Rob Edwards (eponymous hero of that 1990 Pericles) doubles the roles of Theseus, head of Athens’ repressive jackbooted regime, and Oberon, the equally cruel despot of fairyland.  Paula Jennings is Theseus’ black-veiled spoil-of-war Hippolyta who becomes translated into a white mini-dressed, sexually liberated Titania. 

Designer Ashley Shairp’s acid-coloured playground of a forest, teeming with bouncing balls and magic lanterns, seems to unleash the potential in every character, including a quartet of mismatched lovers fleeing from the city, and a weaver with a thespian bent and an ass’s head.

Vanessa Kirby’s heart-broken Helena sets the stage alight with her passion, energy and comic timing - no wonder Rob Edwards’ magisterial Oberon is so visibly taken by her.  Compassion for the young mortal melts his hard heart and leads to a sequence of reconciliations, including his own with Paula Jennings’ luscious and uninhibited Titania.

Kieran Hill makes an unusually good-looking Bottom and is beautifully rigged out for his Act V turn as Pyramus, but Russell Dixon’s Peter Quince runs off with the comedy honours for a spot on portrait of a fruity old-school actor in a classic piece of character acting.

The handling of the verse is uniformly excellent, and David Thacker’s inspired use of the entire auditorium really brings the show alive, ably assisted by music director Carol Sloman’s trippy score and Wayne Dowdeswell’s hallucinogenic lighting.

The production could benefit from being played at a much faster pace as its current running time is more akin to Hamlet than a comedy which I once saw performed in ninety minutes flat.  Nevertheless this is a colourful, energetic and lucid production of the original rom-com.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 6 March 2010

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Friday 5, Saturday 6, Monday 8, Wednesday 17 and Sat 27 Feb @ 2pm

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk