Introducing young children to Shakespeare through performance is an admirable enterprise, but Dominic Leclerc's version of this summer favourite, specially adapted for over-5s, could more easily confuse than inspire. His staging, designed by Rachael Canning, sets the work in a vaguely Victorian nursery, where characters emerge from a giant playbox. Puck is a blue-haired jack-in-the-box clown. Lysander and Demetrius are toy soldiers; Hermia and Helena are clockwork dolls, the former pristine and ringletted, the latter tatty and malfunctioning. The conceit roots the production in the storybook world of childhood. But it has drawbacks, not the least of which is that the tedious repositioning of oversized building blocks makes for a decidedly unromantic evocation of enchanted Athenian woods.

The action is preceded by a 20-minute modern-speech prologue, in which Dale Superville's affable Bottom explains the basics of the plot. Once the play proper begins, it quickly becomes apparent that turning the characters into toys has backfired. The lovers cannot endow their roles with much personality when required to move as if jerkily mechanised. And the quick costume changes necessitated by the playing of all the parts by an ensemble of just six means that we are confronted with fairies inelegantly got up in soldiers' tunics with paper wings flapping feebly on their backs.

Matthew Hart offers a much-needed scintilla of magic with his nimble Puck. But the really memorable bright spots were supplied by children plucked from the audience, whose spontaneity and evident pleasure in participation couldn't fail to delight. “Your tail's fallen off!” pointed out one little girl who had been recruited to Titania's fairy train, and had indeed spotted the ass's tail making a bid for freedom from Superville's rear. Better still were the antics of small boys, who joined the Mechanicals in the roles of Wall and Moonshine. The second of these was so blissfully absorbed in swinging his lantern with wild abandon that he was oblivious to the efforts of the professional actors he was upstaging. The rest of Leclerc's production couldn't match his infectious sense of fun.

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