It is business as usual now for the RSC’s London season. After all the hoo‑ha of David Tennant’s/Edward Bennett’s Hamlet, it’s off to the relative calm of the Athenian forest for Gregory Doran’s enchanting take on gods, mortals and a night of magic.

Bennett appears in this production, as one of the four confused young lovers. Yet although Bennett (whose Demetrius is a besuited oaf in contrast to Tom Davey’s portrayal of Lysander as a slacker dude) proves himself once more a fine deadpan comic performer, the RSC’s much-vaunted ensemble principle reasserts itself, with the whole amounting to more than the sum of its considerable parts.

What is most heartening — and by no means a given for a Shakespeare comedy — is to hear the audience’s laughter ringing out loud and unforced right from the start. There’s much to amuse in this nimble modern-dress production that pays appealing attention to small details. The Brummie-accented Rude Mechanicals, for instance, gather initially around a stand selling takeaway falafel, and go on to produce a highly satisfying Pyramus and Thisbe. Joe Dixon’s Bottom grandstands delightfully.

The bareness of Francis O’Connor’s design allows for no sylvan trappings, which is initially disconcerting, but there is a gratifying sense of strangeness once the action moves away from the bright lights of the big city. These fairies, we feel, could go either way in their interactions with the mortal realm and they do not shy from leading the bewildered youths down wrong paths and strewing their belongings liberally about.

That final fairy blessing of the nuptial beds, under strings of twinkling light bulbs and a glass globe of a moon, feels suitably hard-won.
Until 7 February (0844 482 5135).