By Galen Simmons
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the boundaries between what’s real, what’s fantasy and what is a dream are thin – almost imperceptible – and the play’s characters slip between one world and the next, in some cases unknowingly.
That magic surrealness is captured perfectly in director Graham Abbey’s 2026 Stratford Festival production. With only a few actual set pieces and props – most notably, a large, blank sphere hung above the stage and a fallen tree on which several characters sit or sleep at various points in the production – the design team’s use of projection to create much of that magic is breathtaking.
From the mist-covered forest floor and a raging river projected onto the stage surface to the sun, moon, and mysterious faces projected onto the sphere, the events that unfold are shrouded in mystique. And the use of projection to depict the magical powers of the fairies in this play, be it Puck (Mike Nadajewski) and Rose Petal (Vivienne Abbey) chasing fairy lights across the stage or Oberon (André Sills) instilling the light of the moon into a flower to enchant Titiania (Sara Topham), the magic depicted feels both dynamic and ever-present.
The magic of this production is also in the movement of the actors. Nadajewski does a marvelous job portraying the fleet-footedness of Puck, the trickster-jester, as he flits about the stage, causing chaos and confusion among the other characters, mortal and fairy alike. So too, the movement of Sills, Topham and the other actors portraying fairies feels otherworldly as they dance under the moon to music played onstage by Nightingale (Dominque LeBlanc) on the violin and mandolin and First Fairy (Laura Condlln) on the viola.
Beyond Puck, who is hilarious in his mortal meddling, much of this play’s comedy comes from the mortal characters as they are enchanted to fall in and out of love with one another.
The constantly shifting love square between Hermia (Vivian Endicott-Douglas), Lysander (Jordin Hall), Helena (Jessica B. Hill) and Demetrius (Thomas Duplessie), and the resultant bickering and outright hostility towards one another, is a particular comedic highlight of this play. As frustration and aguish mix with Helena’s unrequited thirst for Demetrius and Lysander’s laughably bad ukelele serenading of both Hermia and Helena, their comedic squabbling provides an excellent counterpoint to the mystical designs of the fairies.
Nick Bottom (Michael Spencer-Davis) and the troop of roustabout, circus actors – Rita Quince (Sarah Dodd), Francis Flute (Aaron Krohn), Snout (Sara-Jeanne Hosie), Snug (Steven Hao) and Robin Starveling (Michael Man) – also add a strong dose of hilarity to the play.
Between their unproductive rehearsal in the fairies’ forest, which results in Puck transforming Bottom into a donkey and Titiana being enchanted to fall in love with said donkey (also hilarious), and the troop’s play within a play for the recently reunited lovers, each of the actors playing actors bring a welcome bevy of levity and absurdity to this production.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at the Tom Patterson Theatre until Sept. 26.
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