A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most tightly constructed plays. Productions that mess with the play’s structure risk creating a string of comic scenes that don’t hold together as a coherent whole. Thankfully, Peter Evans’s heavily cut and rearranged version for Bell Shakespeare doesn’t just avoid these pitfalls. It creates a play with a viewpoint and a clear storyline with its own sense of balance.

The production’s silent opening sets the rules for a stripped-back, non-spectacular staging that trains its audiences to participate in creating the magic of the play’s encounter between human and fairy worlds. As the Mechanicals arrive for their first rehearsal of Pyramus and Thisbe, the play-within-the-play, Puck (Ella Prince) disconcerts them by shifting the furniture. Magic lesson number one: this is what invisibility ‘looks’ like. Teresa Negroponte’s set – tables and chairs against a dilapidated wooden wall – is the screen on which we will project our imaginations.

As a low-key and diffident Quince (Imogen Sage) quietly managed an over-enthusiastic Bottom (Matu Ngaropo, the engaging comic standout of the cast), I was initially confused by an apparent failure to play up the text’s opportunities for comic conflict among the varied personalities and hierarchies of the Mechanicals. As the scene continued, the apparent failure began to feel like a provocative choice. These Mechanicals model how to create community among people who might find one another deeply annoying – by refraining as far as possible from becoming annoyed. As a group they are thoroughly likeable. By the end of the scene, they seemed like an am-dram group I would be happy to join – and learn life lessons from.

And so, without imposing an ill-fitting concept or drawing clunky modern-day parallels, this Dream has a message relevant for today’s audiences used to reality television, social media, and polarised politics: conflict might seem like a fun spectator sport, but watching as people choose not to engage with conflict can be inspiring.

Imogen Sage, Ella Prince, Ahunim Abebe and Laurence Young in A Midsummer's Night Dream (photograph by Brett Boardman)

By starting with the rehearsal scene and its discussions of potential audience reactions, this Dream sets out its manifesto for practitioners and audiences alike: theatre is something we do, not just something we watch – a collaborative venture where the pleasure is in the collaboration as much as in the result. The sense of recognition of a bond between performers and audience is conveyed effectively in Isabel Burton’s gentle connections with the audience during Helena’s soliloquies, and is maintained throughout the play.

Except for Ella Prince as Puck, all the cast members take on multiple roles. Teresa Negroponte’s costume designs facilitate quick transformations between characters, even if some of the choices do not bear close scrutiny – the Mechanicals’ long coats and hats usefully conceal the actors’ costumes for their young-lover roles, but why is anyone wearing winter clothing in a play set midsummer?

Despite the role doubling and lack of set changes, the different scenes and character groups are clearly differentiated, aided by lighting designer Benjamin Cisterne’s low-key changes in lighting colour and sound designer Max Lyandvert’s combination of electronic throbs and tinkles for the fairy scenes. Fairies dress in black, speak in mannered tones, and climb up, down, and through the set. Richard Pyros’s arch delivery as Oberon is particularly effective, while Imogen Sage’s athletic Titania owns the set, in contrast to her Quince. Mechanicals wear dowdy outdoor clothes. The court wears Renaissance-inflected robes, while Helena, Hermia (Ahunim Abebe), Lysander (Laurence Young), and Demetrius (Mike Howlett), relatable as both Shakespearean and contemporary young lovers, wear modern streetwear.

Audiences familiar with the play might have some of their expectations challenged as the production chooses not to milk lines for laughs until the final scene. That’s not to say that the play’s forest scenes aren’t funny or enjoyable – they are. But we are almost never invited to laugh at a character, even if this means playing down the text’s clear comic potential. This is a production that models kindness to its characters, even if they themselves practise or have to contend with cruelty and unkindness in their dramatic worlds.

There are, of course, quibbles to be made, but they rarely undermine the overall enjoyment of the piece. On one hand, verse speaking is perhaps not as consistently well executed as it might be, especially among the young lovers. On another, articulation is almost always excellent, presumably due to voice director Jack Starkey-Gill’s input. As a result, the potentially confusing story is clearly communicated. Ella Prince’s highly mannered line readings as Puck were the one area where verbal sense occasionally gave way to vocal stylisation. But these are small points.

Having avoided playing the forest scenes for laughs, the production finally lets rip in a genuinely hilarious ending as the Mechanicals stage their Pyramus and Thisbe. Again, we laugh with, rather than at, the characters in their determination to make their play work in the face of repeated challenges. We root for Quince as the prologue hits its stride after a shaky beginning. Mike Howlett as Snout plays the Wall with a comic presence unexpected from his turn as Demetrius. And Bottom-as-Pyramus and Flute-as-Thisbe (Richard Pyros) bring the house down with their determined attempts to wrangle an entirely unsuitable sword.

This Sydney showing of the Dream is the beginning of a national tour. If amateur theatre companies across Australia suddenly experience an upturn in membership, they might thank Bell Shakespeare’s admirable Mechanicals.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bell Shakespeare) continues at the Sydney Opera House until March 30 before touring nationally. Performance attended: 7 March 2024.