For a city with a Nationwide-bound football team, they certainly house a Premiership ballet company! Katy Lewis saw Leeds' Northern Ballet Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream ahead of its arrival in Milton Keynes.

Jonathan Ollivier as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo Brian Slater Read our interview with Jonathan Ollivier

The Leeds-based Northern Ballet Theatre are known for successfully combining classical dance and modern theatre and this production doesn’t disappoint. It breathes fantastic new life into A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This classic Shakespearean comedy is always an audience favourite but this time the company’s Artistic Director David Nixon has transported the quarrelling lovers and feuding fairies into a unique setting and one which the company are familiar with. The characters are now all part of a touring dance company and the shenanigans that are usually played out in a forest all take place on a sleeper train between London and Edinburgh as the dancers travel to their next show.

The company's final rehearsal has been a disaster and as they get on the train, the arguments continue. As the train speeds north it enters a tunnel, tension grows and the company find themselves in a strange nocturnal world where they have to resolve their disputes.

Entering a tense twilight world where numerous disputes are played out may sound like a normal long distance train journey in this country, but let’s face it, if it were based on that, then all the action would have to take place on a coach or a taxi as damage to the overhead lines would have long since rendered any train useless!

But this scenario really works for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not only do the characters translate well into this new setting - Theseus becomes the Artistic Director, Hippolyta his prima ballerina who he wants to retire, while the four lovers are competitive soloists - but the idea of hierarchy and battles of ego could relate to any working situation. It therefore shows a modern understanding of some of the themes and shows once again how Shakespeare really understood human nature.

Using body language alone, and mixing comedy with dance, the company are more than eloquent in portraying the romantic entanglements of the lead characters.

The ballet class in A Midsummer Night's Dream

The comic fighting between Lysander and Hermia and Helena and Demetrius as they each fail to win the object of their desire is very intricate and very funny. I particularly enjoyed an exuberant Pippa Moore as a tiny Helena pursuing Christopher Hinton-Lewis' Demetrius. It was very inventive and really kept the audience enthralled, and laughing!

Then there’s the fact that it looks fantastic. Set in the late 1940s, the glamorous costumes designed by director David Nixon reflect Dior’s post-war New Look, and range from the stylish black and white of the rehearsal room to a riot of colour in the ‘dream’ sequence.

But for anyone with even a passing interest in stage design and the machinations of the set, Duncan Haylor’s creation is very clever and fully deserved its round of applause, something I believe is a regular occurrence during their current tour. It’s worth the ticket price alone just to see the rehearsal room turn into the train and then the train move off the platform!

In fact, the only thing that didn’t sit well with me was the couple of points where the cast spoke lines. Their body language was been more than enough so there really seemed no need for it.

But this is merely nit-picking. David Nixon and his talented cast have done a superb job. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fun, witty, vivacious, stylish and visually fantastic and I can’t image why anybody wouldn’t enjoy it - unless of course, you have a complete aversion to dance!

For a city with a Nationwide bound football team, they certainly house a Premiership ballet company!

Read our interview with Jonathan Ollivier >>

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