Think of any production you have ever seen, on stage or screen, of Shakespeare's lyrical romantic comedy and you will still be a million miles from any point of identification with what Oskaras Korsunovas has achieved with his eponymous Lithuanian company.
Shakespeare may have penned some of his prettiest lines ever in this most visual of plays, but this clear-thinking director does not translate them into pretty pictures. At least, not on stage. Instead, he encourages his audience, here containing an encouraging number of young actors and drama students, to formulate their own images, even providing them with the projection screens on which to view them. There are no gauzy costumes, no fairy wings, no elaborate ass's head. The cast wear playclothes - baggy denim and quaintly patterned cotton dungarees - and rely entirely on their own personal armoury of props - their voices, expressive faces, humour and agile bodies and a never-still collective inner eye.
Then there are the boards. Boards? Scarcely is there a moment when any one of the performers is without a life-sized wooden board. We are confronted by their initially unsettling, blank presence long before their owners fully emerge. Then, through clever lighting and movement, they take on a life and personality of their own, providing the setting - the court, forest, the walls and pillars of Athens, the connecting walkway between the two worlds - and, more importantly, the bridge between the play and the imagination.
In this slightly curtailed production, interest falls firmly on life in the forest rather than within the formal, faceless walls of Theseus's court. What wanton goings-on are to be found in this wild place and how joyfully and mischievously they are portrayed. And in that combination of joy and mischief lies the key to the evening's success. Some 16 energetic, talented young performers, guided by a sympathetic, instinctive director, a beautiful, timeless play with universal themes and a plethora of original ideas and interpretations . . . If there were times when a little less would have sufficed, one could certainly not have asked for more.
