A Midsummer Night’s Dream review – regal rockers and a fairy folk band strike up trouble

The magic comes in the music in Atri Banerjee’s production of Shakespeare’s comic romance. “Rock’n’roll, you can’t beat it,” says one character, and it feels like gig theatre in some breakout moments when fairies and Athenians grab a handheld mic for a musical number.

The lovely folk-infused melodies that accompany the drama – sometimes halting it altogether – are composed by Maimuna Memon. Titania’s fairy crew are a supercool four-piece group, variously playing electric guitar, violin, keyboard and other instruments. Theseus is a rock star; so is Puck.

There is much that enthrals in Max Pappenheim’s sound design, whose tweeting birds merge with those in the park, while Naomi Dawson’s set opens up to the world of the forest, with open doors leading from the artificial to the real. A banner reads “This Green Plot” and a dressing rail is tucked in the backdrop.

‘Modernity and humour’ … Terique Jarrett (Demetrius) and Mary Malone (Helena) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photograph: Marc Brenner

The show feels slightly less smooth in its conjoined stories of the forthcoming wedding of Hippolyta (Jenny Rainsford) and Theseus (Olivier Huband) and the dispute between fairy king and queen, Oberon (also Huband) and Titania (also Rainsford), along with the antics of the runaway lovers crisscrossing in the forest and the comedy of the mechanicals.

There is modernity and humour, particularly through Bottom (Nadeem Islam) – he is D/deaf and brings sign language and fabulous physical comedy. But some of the innovation appears borrowed from the school of Jamie Lloyd. The set’s stairs may differentiate between the Athenian, human and fairy worlds, and underline their gradations of power, but they also seem derivative of the bleachers in Lloyd’s Evita.

‘Fabulous physical comedy’ … Nadeem Islam as Bottom. Photograph: Marc Brenner

The characters and costumes have a similarly hipsterish look with cool contemporary-wear crossed with period flecks (ruffles on shirt-fronts, puffball skirts). Their wry modern-day asides (“I see you”, “Be cool”) do not jar in themselves, and play into a sense of parallel time (representing now and an indistinct other, past world), but some of the beauty of the verse is rather muted in the mouths of the cast. The wisdoms on love and illusion are all faithfully there (“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”) but they float, unanchored.

The doubling up of the royal couples is not distinctive enough, and Theseus and Hippolyta’s chemistry is unconvincing. The other couples work better: Hermia (Hiftu Quasem) is every inch the rebel daughter who runs away to this forest with her lover, Lysander (Misia Butler). Helena (Mary Malone) is a highlight, with some wonderfully tortured comedy eked out from her unrequited love for Demitrius (Terique Jarrett). Puck (Georgia Bruce) not only pours “love in idleness” into the eyes of the couples but also sings and banters, becoming a kind of compere to the gig, in spirit.

The world of the Mechnicals brings great ticklish fun; every character here is endearing and entertaining. Yet the pace slows to such a degree that the performance of their play is too long and laboured. So a dreamy production in its look and sound but you do not feel like you have quite entered into its enchantments.

• At Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London, until 18 July