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4.30 pm. Pleasance. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Fringe.) I have also been told on no account to miss the Ukrainian company Theatre-on-Podol. In the queue to see its 100-minute version of Shakespeare’s comedy, I meet two Canadians whom I told the good word about Podol last night. They tell me that they’re glad I’m here because if it’s no good they’ll lynch me. Oh dear. Well, it is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the further it departs from Shakespeare the more enthralling it becomes. (An odd touch comes when the rustics switch from Ukrainian into Shakespearean English for Pyramus and Thisbe: e.g.: “I zank zou, Moon, for zy glittering beams,” etc…) Theseus is sick; he and his court dream the story of erotic magic and fairies in the wood. Later, when Bottom & Co. play Pyramus and Thisbe at court, Theseus suddenly takes cruel revenge on Bottom for having made it (even if in ass’s form) with Hippolyta-Titania; he stops the play and hands Bottom-Pyramus a real sword to kill himself with. So Bottom-Pyramus dies the noble Athenian way, and Flute-Thisbe follows suit; Hippolyta is aghast but powerless. Suddenly, however, Bottom and Flute spring back to life; they were good enough actors to fake death; and the joke, or dream, was on the nobles. All which turns the play into a Marivaux-type play about heart and heartlessness. The lights go up. Oh dear.