SHAKESPEAREAN CLASSIC DESERVED MUCH BETTER

My poor heart sank at the sight of the set for this deeply frustrating mess of, ahem, Shakespearean proportions.

- With STEFAN KYRIAZIS

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM ★★ REGENT'S PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE UNTIL JULY 18 OPENAIRTHEATRE.COM

The tiered MDF steps and ugly frame (ironically stamped with THIS GREEN PLOT, yawn) gave me traumatic flashbacks to Jamie Lloyd's first stab at Evita right here, only in concrete and corrugated iron.

Both his heroine and our fairy queen deliver climactic scenes in a cream negligee, but only one is supposed to be frolicking in an enchanted forest. The top curtains later reveal a large clothes rail and make-up table (used once) and sub-Ikea wallpaper with trees on it.

Hatches and trapdoors open like some 1970s kids' show. You expect a gurning puppet to stick its head out.

Act Two sees the stage naffly dotted with sparse sprigs of purple flowers I suspect are leftovers from last year's Brigadoon. Yet again, this venue has ostentatiously worked against its glorious surroundings to achieve precisely nothing.

The costumes are a prop box mishmash of cod Elizabethan ruffles mixed with 1970s glam, which at least works with Maimuna Memon's folky prog-rock music.

The excellent on-stage band is fronted by a mesmerising Amelia Gabriel, who actually feels like something out of an eerie fairy tale.

Atri Banerjee’s lack of directorial clarity manifests in all the, mostly aggressively contemporary, performances. Some are strong but few complement each other. The Bard's rhythms and rhymes are mangled and muffled, lines thrown away with little effect.

The biggest laughs should not come from improv gags and pratfalls that often overshadow the text.