Full company announced to join Munya Chawawa in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Co-directed by Justin Audibert and Hannah Joss
18 September – 17 October, Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester’s Festival 2026 finale takes audiences to the exuberant, enchanted world of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, riotously transposed to 1990s Sussex where traditional values are going head-to-head with the party to end all parties. It runs from 18 September – 17 October, with a press night on 25 September.
It’s 1994 in Chichester, and Tory MP Theseus is riding high after shutting down free raves across the county, aided by local Chief Constable Egeus. Four spirited but unhappy young lovers rebel against their stuffy elders’ rules and take off to the South Downs.
Over the fields in Worthing, bohemian aristo-landowners Oberon and Titania are organising an illicit rave with naughty fixer Puck – when they aren’t arguing over the affections of The Changeling, a DJ party boy.
Meanwhile, the local Young Conservatives are busy rehearsing a play for Theseus’s forthcoming wedding, with the slightly over-enthusiastic support of new Club member, Bottom.
As night falls, psychedelic potions lead to startling transformations in the heady haze of freedom and desire. In the South Downs, magic is real. Anything can happen.
Artistic Director Justin Audibert follows his acclaimed Hamlet and hugely popular Festival Theatre production of Redlands, co-directing with Hannah Joss (Choir), in a production which celebrates Shakespeare’s language while spinning the world of Elizabethan players into full-colour living memory.
Joining comedian and satirist Munya Chawawa as Bottom, are Eve Ponsonby* (who recently played Ophelia in Hamlet at CFT) as Titania and David Sturzaker (Gareth Southgate in the UK tour of Dear England, To Kill a Mockingbird West End) as Oberon; with Charlie Beck (Gentlemen Arcola; Silent Witness) as Snug / Mustardseed; Shane David- Joseph (Driftwood Kiln Theatre; The Thursday Murder Club) as Puck; Celeste Dodwell (Much Ado About Nothing National Theatre) as Hippolyta; Henry Everett (The Crucible, Antony and Cleopatra National Theatre) as Egeus; Tom Kanji (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold CFT/West End) as Theseus; Ellie Larkin (recent LAMDA graduate) as Lysanda; Afi Okaidja (Rocks; Grime Kids) as Snout / Peaseblossom; Freya Parks (Here We Go; This Town) as Helena; Gavin Rasmussen (recent LAMDA graduate) as The Changeling / Philostrate; Angela Sant’Albano (Industry; I Hate Suzie) as Hermia; Anna Soden (Malory Towers Emma Rice Company; Twelfth Night Shakespeare’s Globe) as Starveling / Moth; Giles Taylor (Shadowlands West End; Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies RSC, West End, Broadway) as Peter Quince; Kieran Taylor-Ford (Fat Ham RSC; For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy West End) as Demetrius; and Kishore Walker (Easy Virtue Cambridge Arts Theatre, Summer 1954 UK tour) as Flute / Cobweb.
Joining them as the Ravers are Adhish Arul, Scarlette Guilfoyle, Mariana
Fonseca, Hattie Musgrove, Jaz Reynolds, Cache Thake, Phoebe Tyler and Riley Woodford.
The set designer is Joanna Scotcher, costume designer Ryan Dawson Laight, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer and sound designer Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, video designer Ian William Galloway, movement director Jade Hackett and casting director Matilda James CDG.
*replacing the originally announced Jemima Rooper, who for personal reasons is no longer able to perform in this production.
