Pimms & Shakespeare Outdoors: It Must Finally be Summer

Finally, after the wettest, coldest, most miserable summer anyone can remember, the skies are smiling on us. This week has been nearly perfect. Mild, sunny days in the high 70s, overarched by vivid blue skies and picturesquely puffy clouds. Followed by gentle, cool evenings. The English are dusting off their sunglasses and heading outdoors. After all, we don't know how long this will last.

The timing was perfect, therefore, for me to accept a corporate invitation to the open air theatre in Regent's Park. There is nothing, after all, that says sophisticated summer quite so well as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" under the stars.

It was a brilliant production. Although, to be fair, it's hard to do AMND badly. It is, quite simply, one of the funniest, most perfectly constructed entertainments ever. Surely proven by the fact that we're still laughing heartily at it almost 400 years after its debut. And I suspect that, like me, most of the people in the theatre had seen the play multiple times. In fact, this was the first Shakespearean play I ever saw, on a grade school field trip to a university production now lost to the mists of 1970s memory.

This event was, no doubt, a good deal more posh. Regent's Park is one of those strange secrets of London. Though just a stone's throw from the madness of Madame Tussaud's, it seems that only locals venture here. It is ringed by some of the finest Regency architecture in the country and filled with many fine features ... the theatre amongst them.

It is surprisingly small, especially to the eyes of any American raised on the massive, municipal outdoor theatres that were built by so many cities in the first quarter of the 20th century. The Regent's Park Theatre is just as old (it's celebrating its 75th year) but far more intimate. The stage is small and cradled by massive old trees. Its four sets of bleachers probably have no more than 40 rows, and blend into trees as well. In fact, the whole place has the feeling of being hidden in a forest; remarkable given its location just a 10 minute walk from the heaving traffic of the A40.

Beyond the arena there are restaurants and bars tucked amidst the trees. As corporate guests we were lucky enough to be quaffing pimms in our own roped-off area as waiters passed plates of nibbles amongst us. Frankly, however, everyone looked like they were having an equally good time, and when we all poured out into the fresh darkness of intermission beneath the sprinkling of fairy lights, we all shared the same magical environment.

Puck, Oberon and Titania could have been behind any tree. If they were, they didn't cast any spells or send any bewitched men into my path. Play over, I rushed for the train station and made my prosaic way home, reminding myself that I really must do this theatre thing more often.