Veronica Coburn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' stresses physical theatre. The result will make your jaw ache, writes Arminta Wallace

Midsummer night's dream, huh? The slippery cobbled streets of Temple Bar on a wet evening in June actually resemble something much closer to nightmare. But inside the Project theatre an old and mysterious brand of magic is at work: the kind that takes a 400-year-old play and invests it with new and utterly contemporary life. Magic and, of course, a lot of hard graft.

"We had five weeks of rehearsals," says Veronica Coburn, director of Barabbas's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which, after two weeks at Project, is about to embark on a nationwide tour. "The first was deceptively gentle. Then, once we got in to the meat of the work, we kept saying, well, that's the tough week over and done with. But it wasn't. Every week was a tough week."

The Barabbas production relocates Shakespeare's airy-fairy fantasy to Ireland. Not, as Coburn's introductory programme note explains, a particular historical Ireland but a composite, notional Ireland that stretches from Riverdance to Popstars via post-colonialism and Celtic mythology.

The characters have been given Irish names; the six actors play at least three roles each; and the rude mechanicals are reinvented as a group of those most traditional of Irishmen, Bob the builders.

To give a rough idea of how this works, Hippolyta - beloved of Theseus, Duke of Athens - becomes Elizabeth, betrothed to Jonathan, Earl of Dublin; Deirdre Molloy, who plays Elizabeth, also plays Titania, queen of the fairies - a.k.a. Brigit na Gig - and Enda Rahilly the brickie. Helen Norton plays Bernadette/Helena and the father of the girl from Shakespeare's second pair of star-crossed lovers - as well as Mick the joiner, a fairy called Lughnasa and a lion. David Pearse plays Cornelius/Demetrius; Seamus Lovett plays the plumber, a.k.a Bully Bottom, and, of course, Pyramus.

It's complicated. It also sounds worryingly, well, meaningful. But as Coburn concludes in the final sentence of her note, "God forbid that Barabbas's Dream should be a socio-political nightmare. It's a rollicking play about love and lust and that inexplicable time between dusk and dawn."

When we meet in the Project bar, after the performance, she recalls that A Midsummer Night's Dream was one of the first plays she acted in. "I have such fond memories of it," she says. "The storyline is so fantastic, and it's so funny, and it's so many things." The Barabbas show is certainly funny. Jaw-achingly funny, in fact. But while wacky - even, sometimes, wilfully perverse - interpretations of Shakespeare are nothing new, what is palpably different about this production is what might be called the Barabbas factor: something that is easy to spot but much harder to quantify.

Part of it, at least, has to do with the company's physical-theatre approach. Coburn's background is in clown, and she has a special affinity with red-nose work. Was it, then, a matter of applying those principles to Shakespeare's comedy? She shakes her head. In conversation Coburn uses an impressive array of gestures that are instantly effective but impossible to express in words. This one floats somewhere between amazement and apology.

"I didn't even try," she says. "Clown is so embedded in me that I don't even think that way. But it is a brilliant learning discipline, because it opens people up. The fact that actors choose to be on stage doesn't necessarily mean they aren't shy or uncomfortable. You see actors on a stage sometimes, and they don't let you in . . . they maintain a certain distance. Clown can help conquer that, bridge the distance.

"When I read a text by Shakespeare, rather than getting bogged down in the words I respond by thinking, how would I move that? How fast is it? What's the direction of it? Everyone who has ever worked with me slags me because I just rant about diagonals all the time. Diagonals, straight lines and circles - though diagonals are my favourite."

The visual aspect is also, she says, a crucial factor. This production was designed by the visual artist and children's illustrator Niamh Sharkey, whose gorgeous colour palette forms the basis for a simple, ingenious set and a generous helping of weird and wonderful sound and lighting effects.

"When you use the term 'physical theatre' people tend to think in terms of backflips and jumping around," says Coburn. "It can be that, but it's also an intention to be physical. I saw the film Girl With A Pearl Earring on video the other night, and it's so exquisitely beautiful. That's what I aspire to in theatre. To me, caring what a production looks like is physical theatre.

"Communication," she goes on, warming to her theme, "is this much the words you say" - she holds up her thumb and forefinger, a millimetre apart - "and that much how you say them" - they move further apart - "and" - they spring apart like a jack-in-the-box - "that much the body language, the physicality that goes on. You can give a very good emotional and psychological reading of a part, but if the pictures don't match, I think at a very fundamental level we, as an audience, don't connect with it. If I had to choose one thing that I obsess over it would be that. Which," she concludes with a grin, "is why I'm with Barabbas."

Clown techniques work particularly well with Shakespearean comedy, although it's worth noting that in its début year Barabbas staged a highly praised Macbeth, directed by Gerry Stembridge, that placed the witches at the centre of the action, with the human characters as puppets. Adapting the text to an Irish context, though, pushing the envelope a little: akin to editing a sonnet down to 12 lines?

Coburn grins, clearly unrepentant. "Yeah, we made a few changes," she admits. "I'm a bit of a philistine in this regard, actually. I don't know an awful lot about Shakespeare, apart from the fact that he wrote the plays, so I don't have a huge fear of the text. At a very simple level it's saying something, and of course we don't speak like that any more. But if you figure out what it is it's saying, and then say it in the right way, we get the gist."

She pulls a face. "If that doesn't sound facetious. Because I love the text. I do. In particular, I love the text of the magicals. So much of what they have to say is so beautifully lyrical. I love that stuff." I know a bank wheron the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows . . . What's not to love?

Wisely, the Barabbas production doesn't mess with the big Midsummer Night's Dream set pieces. "We had the voice coach Robert Price working with us in rehearsal, which was very interesting," says Coburn. "We've never had that before. A text man. He did such basic things as saying, this is prose and this is iambic pentameter. Of course, the actors didn't need that, because they're all very intelligent, very capable. But . . ." She smiles fondly. "We did actually sit there with the text, going, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM. That's Barabbas for you. We just follow our noses: sniff things out like truffle pigs." What they've come up with, this time around, is a theatrical treat.