{"id":738088,"date":"2026-08-14T20:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738088\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T20:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:00:10","slug":"midsummer-review-suri-noelle-sparkles-in-a-frisky-dream-at-the-edinburgh-fringe-edinburgh-festival-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738088\/","title":{"rendered":"Midsummer! review \u2013 Suri Noelle sparkles in a frisky Dream at the Edinburgh fringe | Edinburgh festival 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not every undergraduate Shakespeare show at the Edinburgh fringe makes headlines<\/a> but this one brings stardust by association. Suri Noelle, the 20-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, appears with her fellow drama students from Pittsburgh\u2019s Carnegie Mellon University. However, it\u2019s a bit of an event regardless \u2013 the UK premiere of a \u201cmodern translation\u201d of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream adapted by Jeff Whitty, a Tony award-winner for the riotous Avenue Q.<\/p>\n

That show, newly returned to the West End<\/a>, is populated by some horny puppets and Whitty\u2019s Dream is similarly frisky. Often more lustful than lovestruck, Noelle\u2019s Helena prowls after Demetrius (Logan Yao) on all fours, Puck (Eli Strain) bares his nipples during the \u201cup and down\u201d speech and when Titania (Siahvash Marshall) instructs the fairies to show Bottom some courtesies, it fuels an orgy.<\/p>\n

Running rings \u2026 Midsummer! at Assembly, Edinburgh. Photograph: Mackenzie Breeden<\/p>\n

The show has a teenage energy \u2013 the lovers are described as \u201cbright young things\u201d \u2013 but this is not a total rewrite like the high-school Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You<\/a>. Whitty retains many of Shakespeare\u2019s speeches but tweaks certain lines to elucidate meaning. For example, in the opening scene, Theseus\u2019s \u201cearthlier happy is the rose distill\u2019d\u201d becomes \u201chappier is the rose plucked for perfume\u201d. Most alterations work just about seamlessly but there are also colloquial additions: Theseus tells the protesting Hermia \u201clet\u2019s put a pin in it\u201d while Bottom later jarringly declares himself \u201cjonesing for a bale of hay\u201d. Most audaciously, yet effectively, Whitty takes a line from Shakespeare and fuses it into a new couplet with words of his own, as he does with Hippolyta\u2019s jibes at Quince.<\/p>\n

Kim Weild\u2019s production takes full advantage of this Spiegeltent-style venue\u2019s mirrored interior, with the characters literally running rings around each other. (Strain\u2019s elfin Puck adds the odd forward roll and pli\u00e9.) Zhuang Kang\u2019s design includes woodcut-style forests and factories, a nod to industrial Pittsburgh which \u2013 though the setting is still spoken of as Athens \u2013 informs themes of class and social status with the arrival of the rude mechanicals. Bri Johnson\u2019s elegant costumes include some magnificent millinery and a dash of tartan.<\/p>\n

Like a dream \u2026 Midsummer! at Assembly, Edinburgh. Photograph: Mackenzie Breeden<\/p>\n

In a heatwave, the climate disorder of the \u201cforgeries of jealousy\u201d speech should really burn through but it\u2019s lukewarm and the play\u2019s darker undercurrent is missing. Bottom\u2019s transformation is also not staged to full effect, though there\u2019s a shiny ass\u2019s head to match the play\u2019s metallic imagery.<\/p>\n

As for Noelle, she sparkles in the comedy throughout as well as in the despair of Helena\u2019s Act 1 Scene 1 monologue, imploringly offered with wide eyes to the front row. Elsewhere, Celia Evans is a wonderfully cowardly lion, Rusty Daniel\u2019s Pyramus makes a bid for the world\u2019s longest death scene and even Moyo Ifafore\u2019s Quince falls for Bottom. The cast\u2019s delivery is crisp, the energy unflagging throughout 90 minutes \u2013 bookended by folk songs \u2013 that go like a dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not every undergraduate Shakespeare show at the Edinburgh fringe makes headlines but this one brings stardust by association.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}