SPRITE Productions began with A Midsummer Night's Dream ten years ago, and now the Ripley company is to call a halt, hopefully saying only au revoir rather than adieu after this summer's return of Shakespeare's most performed, most perfumed comedy.

Company founders Liam and Hester Evans-Ford are taking a year out to consider Sprite's future, one that Hester says would need more funding if the company were to start afresh.

The hiatus is no idle threat; it really will take more than a sprinkle of Oberon's purple potion to revive one of the arts highlights of the Yorkshire summer calendar once Catherine Pugh's Puck has restored amends for the last time on July 13.

Sprite have become an institution with their bracing brand of site-specific shows, their promenade productions keeping the audience on their toes and constantly stimulated, never settling in one space before chairs and rugs are gathered up once more and Philippa Herrick's raucous music leads the way to the next spot.

Ripley Castle is the perfect setting with its formal walled gardens for court scenes and woods for bursts of sylvan sensuality, or the chance to go wild in the country, as Bow Wow Wow once exhorted, and the 2014 company certainly does that more than ever.

Charlotte Bennett, directing Sprite for the fourth time, was infused with the spirit of samba on a visit to Brazil earlier this year, and so she has her cast banging drums of assorted sizes, tin plant pots and even a bath tub to stir the audience from picnics and from scene to scene, invariably led by Pugh's hyper-mischievous Puck. Except when Puck is riding the statue of a golden reindeer like a jockey in the home straight, an image that typifies Sprite's sense of fun and surprise.

Meanwhile, in the aforementioned bath, Al Barclay buries himself in plastic balls as he joyfully blows bubbles. All points to nature having gone awry, the world tipped into an alternative form of global warming by the warring fairy king and queen, Liam Evans Ford's Oberon and Emma King's Titania, whose spat has so over-heated that Midsummer's Day has stretched into Midwinter's Day in an "endless cycle of summer", or so the director speculates in her programme note.

"To think that the lovers have experienced endless heat and humidity for the past six months when they should have seen the seasons change maybe goes further to explain their fuelled lust and desire," she reasons.

Sprite's young lovers take her at her word, Nick Lawson's Lysander, Heather Long's Helena, Gabriel Bisset-Smith's Demetrius and Sarah Ovens's Hermia exhausting themselves and giving the company a big cleaning bill for Anna Gooch's fabulous costumes as they chase each other through the woods, the girls with grass and foliage in their hair, the boys bashing each other with sticks and branches.

The physicality of Bennett's production is irresistible, but the language is full of life too, especially in the mouths of Pugh's Puck and Daniel Abelson's outstanding Bottom.

'Dream' over, the dream beyond midsummer must be for Sprite to rise again.

 

Only One Question for... Charlotte Bennett, director of Sprite Productions’ midsummer show, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Ripley Castle.

Should A Midsummer Night’s Dream really be called A Midwinter Night’s Dream, Charlotte?

“Despite the title, we have concluded that we don’t think this play is actually set in midsummer. We know from the text that Titania and Oberon are in the middle of a brawl which has disturbed the seasons: ‘The human mortals want their winter here, no night is now with hymn or carol blest’.

“It would appear that the play is actually meant to be set in December; the seasons should have changed for the mortals and we should have winter now, but the fairy king and queen’s argument has kept the earth hot and we are stuck in an endless cycle of summer.

“To think that the lovers have experienced endless heat and humidity for the past six months when they should have seen the seasons change maybe goes further to explain their fuelled lust and desires.”

Is Charlotte on to something here? Are Oberon and Titania an alternative cause of global warming? Your emailed thoughts please, dear Shakespeare scholars, addressed to charles.hutchinson@nqyne.co.uk

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sprite Productions, Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, until July 13. Box office: 01423 772994 or spriteproductions.co.uk