A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is fine. If you think it's worthy of a 1-star review, I'd ask you to sit down and watch the 2018 adaptation that sets the story in Hollywood and focuses on cell phones and (I know this secondhand, having shut the thing off 20 minutes in because I hated it) a human butt instead of a donkey.

At least they're trying to say something new with the text. The performances are all solid (BBC sets the standard for this sort of Shakespearean performance on television and should really have handled House of the Dragon instead of HBO, though that's neither here nor there). The sets are adequate. The ideological twist--that Theseus is a fascist Hitler-type dictator--either will or won't work depending on the viewer's taste; the symbolism is simultaneously obvious and opaque, accomplishing a lot by remaining relatively broad and open-ended and conveying meaning through set design and costume rather than the alteration of dialogue (see above comments on performance quality: good delivery and physicality).

This updating of the play works beautifully I think.

I love Shakespeare and classic opera and I'm wary of modern updates - so often they are facile or irritating and get in the way of the text/score. But this was a delight: genuinely funny, lovely special effects and a real feel for the soul of the play. It wasn't perfect - occasionally the words got lost in the music or through less than perfect diction. I studied this play at school more than 50 years ago and didn't get much of the humour or the cruelty in the treatment of the characters that this production brought out.

I will want to see more traditional productions as well but will return to this one too. Well done RTD - overall it was a great 1hour 35minutes. The BBC have done us proud in the Shakespeare anniversary year with this and the wonderful Hollow Crown.

This is a kind of fantastical story where fairies overthrow neo-nazis (and you know what? Good for them), but it's not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, though it does make copious use of his language in new contexts that some people might find interesting.

If you're looking for something that's going to warm your heart and make you cheer for cast of racially-diverse, queer-coded good guys, this might do it for you. If you want to watch A Midsummer's Night Dream, you've got to look elsewhere.

The whole time I was thinking about the poor students who will put this on instead of reading the play and then give their English teachers aneurysms when they recount plot events.

I'm baffled. I could swear I've read the play and have seen several performances, but this movie has me questioning everything. There are characters I don't remember, and lines I do remember were missing. And what about the opening scene?!? Did George Orwell rewrite this?

The actors were all superb and I would love to have seen them in A Midsummer Nights Dream, but I don't know what the hell this thing was. At least the special effects were interesting?

I don't know, it starts as a Nazi fever dream, then it toys with the idea of being the play itself, then turns into the musical adaptation of a Sonnet. Honestly if not for Puck's famous soliloquy asking us not to take offense I would be offended.

This is a BBC-imagined modern retelling of Shakespeare's classic, with a diverse and stellar cast, intense presentation, a compelling score, fantastic costume design and energy at every turn. And the 90-minute running time moves the story along quickly! Check it out.