A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It) (Barbican)

Director Dmitry Krymov says of himself: "I am not a fairy. I am a craftsman." Indeed, those of you who come to his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream will not find the Athenian wooded madness of Shakespeare's play, but there is still plenty of insanity, suffused with theatrical magic. Krymov's production title has As You Like It in parentheses after it, already subverting our ideas of what we should expect. This is very much theatre as Krymov likes it: focused on drama's modes of production, with the entire show devoted to the Pyramus and Thisbe story as told by the Mechanicals.

There is certainly a sense of the show being under construction when we enter the theatre, with scaffolding on the stage and a rag-tag bunch of men in workers' dungarees. The stage itself is covered in what looks like a dust sheet, and the cavernous space of the Barbican's main theatre is laid bare. But it's not long before the company gets to work, pulling an enormous tree (indicative of the Athenian wood we never actually get to see) and a large working fountain (of Duke Theseus' court) across the stage and away from the audience's sight. The workmen then change into their dinner jackets, complete with tails (the dog already has his), and wait awkwardly, unaccustomed to performance and ceremony.

The scaffolding, it turns out, provides onstage seating for the Russian well-to-do, who eventually arrive. They are headed up by the hilarious Liya Akhedzhakova who tells absurd stories and gossip throughout the performance, as well as wealthy families and businessmen. This 'audience' are representative of the Athenians who watch and comment on the Mechanicals' entertainment, and the fact that their interjections, like the main performance itself, are conducted entirely in Russian (with English surtitles) creates an even more surreal remove from what we, the actual audience, might be expecting from a Shakespearean play.

With the traditional figures of Titania, Oberon, and Puck nowhere in sight, the stage becomes filled with a fantastic collective of clowns, acrobats, puppeteers, musicians, opera singers, and a dog called Venya. The stage is tilted towards the audience, as if the performance might tumble into our laps at any time. One almost hopes it does, such is the sense of haphazard fun and comic joy. Pyramus and Thisbe themselves are huge, gangly, hodge-podge puppets, manipulated by a company that truly understands comedy and story-telling. Consequently, the show is always dynamic, inspired, and absurdly funny.

At one point, when explaining the Mechanicals' artistic method, the surtitles mention the quality of Shakespeare's essential englishness. One may ask what remains of Shakespeare's drama when all of it is removed except the play-within-a-play, and none of Shakespeare's words are spoken (there is a sonnet, but it is recited in Russian). However, the recent popularity of Shakespeare In Love reminds us that what audiences want is love and a bit with a dog. Krymov's production features a very silly love story, and a very clever dog, all held together by a company that constantly challenges the audience's expectations of Shakespeare, Russia, and theatre itself. Does anyone know the Russian for 'tour de force'? Because that's exactly what this is.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It) is at the Barbican until 15 November