AllWays Traveller Features
Laugh out loud and very proud
Laugh out loud and very proud
It is a joyously carefree production of irrepressible exuberance, improvisation, song and dance and with audience rapport and participation at its very heart.
Achieving something that appears almost haphazardly staged can only be achieved by a consummate cast of performers possessing genuine comedic skills and great comic timing.
A mid-Summer Nights Dream is playing at Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside London until 29 August 2026.
(Images : Helen Murray)
Wonderfully larger than life
Probably written between 1594 and 1596, A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most enduring and endearing plays and became a repertoire staple of his company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men.
With the original Globe built for the company in 1599, it would have been performed any number of times, during his lifetime, on the theatre's thrust stage, which comes out into the audience on three sides.
And this current production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in the faithfully recreated Globe, allows us to get as close as possible to the experience theatregoers would have enjoyed 450 plus years ago.
It embraces and exploits the atmosphere inherent in the Globe's unique layout with sing-alongs and 'auditions' already taking place as we arrive.
And creates a real bond between the players and their audience that permeates the whole of this wonderfully larger than life production.
The plot of a Midsummer Night's Dream is very well known.
As night falls on the eve of the royal wedding between Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, the Mechanicals who are a company of amateur performers prepare a play for the big day.
At the same time four Athenians run away to the forest only for the fairy Puck to make both of the 'boys' fall in love with the same girl.
Puck also manages to make Titania, Queen of the Fairies, fall in love with Bottom the Weaver, who has been turned into a donkey.
As mayhem ensues, we get to enjoy a production that is a laugh out loud delight from start to finish.
(For a full synopsis of the play : https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/midsummer-nights-dream/).
The Globe
The new Shakespeare's Globe, on London's Bankside, is as faithful a reproduction of the original 1599 Elizabethan playhouse.
It was opened in 1997 some 750 feet (230 meters) from the site of the original
An Elizabethan-style 20-sided wooden amphitheatre, it was built using traditional 16th-century timber-framing techniques and English green oak, and with hand-cut mortise and tenon joints avoiding the need for structural steel.
It has the only thatched roof permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666.
The layout features a central, uncovered' yard' where standing audience members (groundlings) gather, surrounded by three levels of covered galleries.
The Globe provides modern day audiences with a real feel of what it must have been like to go to the theatre in Elizabethan times.
Other Shakespeare productions at the Globe
Much Ado About Nothing
(11 June to 24 October 2026)
Sharp tongues and savage gossip fuel a messy, magnetic attraction in this new production Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in the Globe Theatre Globe
Beatrice has sworn off men, but there's something about Benedick she just can't leave alone.
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/much-ado-about-nothing/
Love's Labour's Lost
(17 July to 13 September 2026)
A new flamenco-inspired production of Love's Labour's Lost.
Passion and power collide as four women arrive in Navarre, testing the vows of the King and his lords.
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/loves-labours-lost/
As You Like It
(14 August to 25 October 2026)
When the Duke's court proves cold and cruel, Rosalind, Celia, and their friends escape into the Forest of Arden – a place alive with lust, revelry, and live music.
A new production of Shakespeare's As You Like It in the Globe Theatre
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/as-you-like-it/
What's on at Shakespeare's Globe :
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/
Shakespeare's Globe
Shakespeare's Globe is a world-renowned theatre, education centre, and cultural landmark based on London's Bankside.
The organisation celebrates Shakespeare's transformative impact on the world by conducting a radical theatrical experiment.
Shakespeare called his theatre a 'wooden O' and like his historic playhouse, the Globe Theatre is a 360° auditorium.
With no roof over the central yard, the theatre is open-air, and audiences who attend performances and tours are told to dress for the weather!
The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is located on the same site in London, next to the Globe Theatre.Named in honour of its founder, the Playhouse is based on indoor candlelit theatres known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
Lit by over one hundred beeswax candles, the intimate Sam Wanamaker Playhouse hosts plays, concerts, education workshops and events throughout the year.
Made up of the outdoor Globe Theatre and the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe remains one of the most unique, remarkable and breathtaking theatrical spaces in London.
Inspired and informed by the unique historic playing conditions of two iconic theatres, its diverse programme of work harnesses the power of performance, cultivates intellectual curiosity, and excites learning to make Shakespeare accessible for all.
At Shakespeare's Globe, more people engage with Shakespeare through their work than through that of any other organisation, with our education department long being one of the most active in the UK.
Activities include school workshops, public events, university courses and community projects, fulfilling Founder Sam Wanamaker's wish to bring Shakespeare and his work to a new generation.
Its two-year world-wide tour of Hamlet visited almost every nation on earth
In recent years, the theatre's long-standing reputation for international performance was consolidated by the Globe-to-Globe Festival which, in 2012 presented, every Shakespeare play, each in a different language.
Shakespeare's Globe's productions of Shakespeare now tour throughout the UK, Europe, the United States and Asia, and its educational work is extending overseas, notably through forthcoming teaching centres in the USA and China.
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/about-us/globe-theatre/
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ISSN 2634-7032
London, United Kingdom
+44 0 7764 198 286