REVIEW: **** (four stars) Steve Sutherland finds a dreamy take on modern manners in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, until 30th March

The rest of us just bang on pretending we’ve won the lottery in the charisma stakes because… well, what else have we got?

There’s an awful of waffle in the RSC programme about dreams – what they used to mean back in Shakespeare’s day and what they may or may not mean now.

And a brief scientific investigation reveals that we spend about a third of our lives asleep and about a quarter of that time dreaming, the conclusion being that dreams – whatever they may be and whatever they may be for – must be important.

But I think this all misses the point. Since the invention of social media, the internet and the iPhone, we all live in dreamland all the time. We have been emboldened to consider our every action in some way meaningful. We are the perpetual stars in our own individual movies, so much so that recent study suggests the way we behave is becoming dictated by the opportunity to photograph, video, record and publish our every act.

In other words, we have become rampantly, uncontrollably and pointlessly narcissistic. We all exist entirely in our own heads.

And that’s pretty much how all the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream behave.

Each inhabits a fantasy that they are owed what they think they deserve.

Look at the so-called lovers. I say so-called because they exhibit none of the give-and-take traditionally associated with the romantic notion of amour. Each of them is so wrapped up in what they think they are due romantically that they couldn’t care less about anyone else, least of all the wishes of their prospective partners.

Dawn Sievewright’s Hermia is permanently starry-eyed and behaves as if it’s her incontestable right to inherit the gold at the end of the rainbow.

Ryan Hutton’s Lysander is a hyperactive knob-on-legs who can’t see further than his own carnal desires, Nicholas Armfield’s Demetrius could do with a little development – he’s a bit of a plod chucked in with all the hotshot hormones writhing about in the rest of them.

And scariest of all is Boadicea Ricketts’ Helena who is, not to put too fine a point on it, a classic stalker.

Recent articles I’ve read reveal that, when all the TikTok-ers and influencers post, they accrue their biggest audiences when they’re crying so, in search of maximum attention, they deliberately play the victim.

It’s a rum business, psychologically speaking, and not exactly what you’d call harmless.

So, say hello to our Helena, revelling in being hard-done-by, loving the fact that she’s endlessly spurned, utterly triumphant in her self-pity. Her turn consists of bouts of explosive protests and gesticulations, as if she not only warrants better from this life but from this play as well. We are confederate in all her breakdowns and she embraces it, plays to the gallery and it makes for a lively, if uncomfortable, watch.

A quick word about Puck.

Rosie Sheehy was indisposed for the Press Night showing so huge plaudits to Premi Tamang whose snarky sprite was every twitch the model of her slave master Oberon.

Happiest when being mean, she delights in manufacturing a contagion of confusion and, when she gets to juggle with the little lights chosen to depict Titania's fairy band, there is a sprinkling of what theatricals like to term magic.

In truth, this production is a play of two halves. The first is a little underwhelming, the rude mechanicals not given much to play with and the rest kind of headlessly racing about. It’s a bit of a bumpy ride, the actors somewhat uneven and a little unsure what to do on paths so well-worn.

But the second half flourishes, not the least, of course, when the locals get to perform their play.

Tom Xander – another stand-in on this occasion – plays an awesome death metal Starveling-cum-Moonshine, Miteshi Soni’s Flute-cum-Thisbe is deliriously daft, Laurie Jamieson’s Snug-cum-lion is suitably pitiful and, best of all, is Emily Cundick’s Snout, a Cure fan who bemusedly finds herself cast as the wall.

There are some very nice touches in this production.

The play so often stands or falls on the way we’re presented with Bottom.

A big hairy head plonked on often works a treat when it comes to eliciting laughs, whereas something more revealing of the actor’s enchantment beneath can also reap dividends.

This time around it’s all about the face, the teeth and, mostly, the ears, which have taken on a phallic life of their own, comically rising and flopping limp as the sexiness of the occasion befits.

And as I’ve said, Baynton’s Bottom’s no slouch. Far from the bloated ham of yore, he’s rather lithe and, if not exactly buff, fit enough that there’s a real and troubling eroticism to his concubinage with Titania.

There’s saucy stuff going on here, bodily fluids are exchanged – we’re left in no doubt of that – and the attraction is not the incomprehensible silliness of slob-meets-beauty-queen that usually draws the sting and diverts from the undercurrent nastiness.

Aside from Neil McCaul’s grumpy old Egeus, who the law dictates is entitled to own his daughter’s future, it’s the two other least sympathetic characters that prosper.

The bunny-boiling Helena gets Demetrius because he’s drugged to comply, and Oberon, well... no matter which way you look at it, the most entitled character in Dream is Oberon and what he does to Titania is not only beyond forgivable, it’s downright criminal.

Bally Gill may play him with a soupçon of the libidinous dithering he brings to his Theseus (like many productions, our Theseus and Hippolyta are doubled up with the fairy royals), but he is a vain, cruel creature who not only considers himself above all other beings but also demands that others acquiesce to his imagined dominion. Hence when Titania refuses to surrender her young ward, an Indian boy she adopted when his mother died, he whips up an unbelievably cruel device in the throes of his tantrum.

A couple of quick things here – first, there’s never been any adequate explanation as to why Oberon wants the kid which can lead to all manner of unsavoury conjecture.

Let’s be generous and just put it down to the dude being such a prat he can’t stand what he perceives as any rivalry for his queen’s affections. Second, the boy is conspicuous by his absence in this production.

We never see, nor hear him. Which may be trying to tell us something. I don’t know. But it’s kind of odd – kind of Waiting For Godot – that the innocent protagonist of all this mayhem never actually gets a look-in.

Anyway, here’s the thing. Like I said, director Eleanor Rhode may have been trying to mitigate the carnage by making Oberon a bit of a div but nonetheless here are the facts. It’s date rape.

He drugs his wife with an Elizabethan version of Rohypnol and ensures she is brutalised by an animal.

Andrew Tate would surely be proud and there’s no magic-ing your way around that one Buster.

I’ve always been astonished that, at the end of the play, Titania, “cured” of her intoxication, waltzes off happily into the sunset with her hubby, keen to know what the heck has just gone on with no hint of any impending fury.

It’s hard to fathom what Sirine Saba wants us to make of her Titania – one minute she’s giddy, the next she’s granite. But whatever, she is, of course, entitled to demand her old man’s head, balls and any other poetically-appropriate body part she so chooses to be presented to her on a plate.

Somebody call the cops!