THE Pocket Dream began life as a way of making A Midsummer Night's Dream more palatable.

Beans on toast, rather than five pieces of fruit a day, or so the philosophy went.

BAFTA-winning Elly Brewer and comedienne and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig hit on the idea of constructing a play within Shakespeare's romantic comedy, wherein 16 of the company have decamped to the pub - correction, 15, because old Mr McKenzie has passed out in the dressing room - and stage manager Jo is left holding the play together.

Jo (EastEnders' star Lucy Benjamin in her first stage role outside pantomime for nine years) must pull a miracle out of the hat with the only two actors left in the building: the ultra-thespian Simon (Ben Porter, in a hammy homage to Richard E Grant), and Phyllida (Susan Kyd), whose Miss Piggy demeanour has caused the cast to exit fast stage left.

Front-of-house manager Felix (Owen Brenman) has lumped all the night's box office on a nag, and so the show must go on. Hyperactive heroine Jo bulks up the cast with herself in the roles of Puck, Hermia and Snout, plus boundlessly-keen, builder-bottomed stage hand Dave (Scotsman Ronnie McCann); hunky gym teacher Tom (Travis Oliver), who is seeking a reconciliation with Phyllida; and the unwilling, preoccupied Felix.

For each production, the play is given a local setting. Hence this time the actors are said to be in "The Wonky Donkey" (the Three Legged Mare in High Petergate); Berwick Kaler receives a mention, so too does The Mount school and Knavesmire (or "the Knavesmire", as it is wrongly called). Oh, and the Grand Opera House is apparently requesting a spare light bulb.

The understudies start by reading from books, but by the magic of theatre these are soon dropped, and the play takes over, its passage buffeted by the mayhem going on all around it. Sadly, it looks hard work, far too laboured and not as camp as Elly Brewer had believed director Paul Clayton would make it.

The cast battles on, not least the ever-effervescent Benjamin and the hangdog Brenman, but The Pocket Dream flags and stutters by comparison with the literary spoofing skills of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and Lip Service, or the on-and-off-stage interplay of Michael Frayn's Noises Off and Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus Of Disapproval. Even those hapless Farndale farces had better moments.

This is a rudely mechanical, coarse comedy that ends up in pantomime territory with Benjamin's Puck flying through the air on a wire like a sugarplum fairy and the audience being called upon to provide its own comedy at the finale. In the Rude Mechanicals' play, we are urged to participate in a Mexican lion's roar and to blow kisses.

Blowing raspberries would be more apt.

Updated: 09:35 Thursday, July 01, 2004