Ein Sommernachtstraum

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.

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.

Midsummer nights dream is considered one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies. This Midsummer nights dream comes alive and delights the senses.

If we have to have an updated version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" John Hannah is an excellent updated Theseus. His campaign and other ribbons strike the 60's military. His minions wear "Star Wars" type costumes.

At least there are some of Shakespeare's words and undertones. For the rest, it is reaching.

We still have fairies in the forest that knows how to talk iambic pentameter. But they do not act fairy-like (more as the guardians of the universe.)

You know the story and you know the words but the actors mumble and growl so you may want to use subtitles. A tad of a twist in the end. C'est la vie.

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).