IN MARCH last year the Everyman re-opened with a sparkling production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and, to celebrate their first anniversary, there’s a return to the Bard with this glorious staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Director Nick Bagnall, in a wonderfully fresh interpretation, has the young lovers played as pubescent teenagers.

The first sighting of Hermia and Helena is in drab grey school uniform and knee-length socks, which makes so much sense in motivating the obsession and turmoil of their feelings and allows the actors to give full vent to Shakespeare’s beautifully poetic language.

In this staging, Shakespeare’s fairy world is much darker than usual and there’s a palpable menace to Gary Cooper’s spiteful Oberon as he orchestrates his jealous revenge on Titania.

The fairy king’s sidekick Puck, beautifully played by Cynthia Erivo in top hat and tails, weaves a malevolent spell as she creates havoc across his fairy kingdom. Here even the fairies, often depicted as benign creatures, are sinister shadows lurking within the forest.

But the Dream is all about light and shade and in contrast to the eerie fairy world, Bagnall gives full rein to the play’s comic moments with the Mechanicals brilliantly portrayed as a road gang, led by Dean Nolan’s fabulously funny Bottom.

Ashley Martin-Davis’s wonderful set proves what every child will tell you — that a few strategically placed cardboard boxes and heaps of crumpled paper can create any sort of magical world, whether a forest, a city or a fairy castle.

This is a flawless production with an outstanding ensemble cast. Emma Curtis as Helena and Charlotte Hope as Hermia, both making their professional stage debuts, are surely two stars of the future.

Their assured and confident performance of the two infatuated young girls is breathtaking and worthy of any established Shakespearian actors and Curtis’s final act as a moody Helena is delightfully subversive.

Beg, borrow or steal a ticket for this production — it really is a dream of a show.

Runs until April 18, box office: www.everymanplayhouse.com