WILLIAM Shakespeare’s fantastic forested tale of love and magic is taking to the city-centre streets.

York street theatre company and horror history tour guides Nightshade Productions follow up last winter’s promenade performances of A Christmas Carol with an urban interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by director, writer and University of York sociology graduate Damian Freddi.

“From tonight, the Grecian lovers swap their clearings and glades for a cruel, manipulative urban stage,” says Damian, outlining his update of Shakespeare’s most performed comedy.

“As the powers of nature that influenced existence lost their worth, so did the fairies, but as humanity created new forces to govern themselves, the fairies found new faces.

“Wealth, Desire, Health and Information are now the powers that fight to control the unsuspecting lovers, as our dark fairy tale sets out to open your eyes to the invisible power that winds around us all.”

From the creators of the York Terror Trail comes the York company’s biggest and most ambitious production yet, in which the cast of 21 will use the streets of York as a “beautiful backdrop for an immersive performance”.

“When I read the play, I noted that if you looked at the themes from a modern perspective, Shakespeare was so far ahead of his time,” says Damian.

“It reminds me of the author Neil Gaiman, who uses the idea that fairies can control you without you ever seeing them, which is pretty much what the fairies do in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“It’s the things that affect your mind and the way you view the world that are so sinister, such as Puck messing with something as powerful as love with nothing more than a flower.”

In Freddi’s version, those powers are still around but their nature has changed. “They’re still invisible – unless they don’t want to be, like a display of ostentatious wealth,” he says. “Each of the fairies in our play is a living embodiment of the new forces created by humanity.

“The two most obviously powerful forces are wealth and beauty. Oberon has slotted into representing wealth, just as Titania is the living embodiment of what a Fairy Queen should be, so she is beauty.”

Puck represents the most complicated force: desire. “Like Puck, desire is uncontrollable, which is why we’ve split Puck into two characters: Puck and Robin Goodfellow. Puck is younger and says Shakespeare’s lines; Robin is an older narrator with lines I’ve written,” says Damian.

In a two-hour production designed to have a sense of chaos, rushing through the streets of York from the Golden Fleece meeting point, old language will meet modern costume, and familiar characters will take on new fairy guises. Moth will become the Fairy of Consumerism; Cobweb, the Media; Mustard Seed, Health; and Peaseblossom, War.

Damian will take any resulting criticism from Shakespeare purists in his stride. “Plays are made to be played with – and with any Shakespeare play that’s put on, the production is more reflective of the director than Shakespeare,” he says.

• Nightshade Productions present A Midsummer Night’s Dream, tonight until July 22 and July 25 to 29, starting at Golden Fleece, Pavement, York. Box office: 01904 623568 or on the night.