"A Midsummer Night's Dream". Oxford Playhouse
'Now, what I want is, Ideas. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Ideas. Ideas alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.' Mr Gradgrind never said that. But if he had, it would have been the touchstone for Holly Race-Roughan's fizzing production of A Midsummer Night's Dream , which is in every way the mirror image to Gradgrind's single-minded quest for Facts. This is a show which takes everything you thought you knew about Shakespeare's most magical play, turns it inside out and back to front, and still, miraculously, makes perfect sense, without ever devaluing the spirit of the original. 'Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down,' incants Sergo Vares' white-faced, demonic Puck again and again. He's not talking about the lovers. He's talking about us. And we don't have a chance. There's a Dream for everyone. And this one may not have been the ideal place to start for the hordes of twel...