A Midsummer Night's Dream

They say that if you can remember the 1960s you weren't really there. ­Alternatively, you might have been in Greece, where the military junta that seized power in 1967 ruthlessly suppressed the counter-culture and regarded hippies as enemies of the state. David Thacker's production opens in a joyless Athens, where a group of sour-faced colonels have brutally overturned the cradle of democracy. Rob Edwards's Theseus is a decorated despot who does not propose to marry Hippolyta so much as annexe her; while Hermia's choice of death or exile if she refuses to obey her father carries a real sense of threat. Yet something is stirring outside the city, where the military junta is ­magically transformed into Sergeant Pepper and his band, and a quartet of young people conduct an experiment in free love aided by mind-altering ­substances. It's a metaphor so obvious it seems surprising no one has thought of it before, but Thacker's concept fits the play like a velvet glove over an iron fist. It isn't quite seamless: some of the performances are uneven, while the luminous balls that get under ­everyone's feet are a distraction that may have been better left in the rehearsal room. But Vanessa Kirby gives a ­performance of statuesque distinction as Helena, with an idiomatic command of the verse that makes Shakespeare sound as hip as Adrian Henri. Thacker takes an enlightened approach to casting: Kiruna Stamell has a major impact as a miniature, tap-dancing Mustardseed, and Laurence Clark is an established comedian, who has cerebral palsy, making his theatrical debut, yet his wheelchair-assisted Wall is indeed "the wittiest partition that I ever heard discourse". Until 6 March. Box office: 01204 520661.