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YOU’RE never too young to be introduced to the Bard.

That’s the mantra of the Shakespeare 4 Kidz organisation, which brings young people to the work of the playwright from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Now the theatre group is heading for the Liverpool Empire with its own unique music-infused version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which it cheekily describes as “getting to the bottom of the Bard”.

Expect fairies and fun, royalty and romance, magic and misunderstandings. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has them all and more.

So it’s little wonder the enchanting comedy is one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s works.

Who can resist the story of a Duke marrying his Amazonian queen, and two sets of lovers who elope into the woods where the audience finds feuding fairies and a naughty sprite called Puck, whose mismanaged magic causes no end of hilarity?

And not forgetting the group of Athenian workmen rehearsing a play to entertain the royal couple at their wedding celebrations.

Young audiences are likely to love Bottom (played here by Sean Luckham), one of theatre’s funniest roles. And they are practically guaranteed to giggle when Noel Andrew Harron’s naughty Puck puts an ass’s head on to him as a prank and fairy queen Titania wakes up and promptly falls in love with him.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of six S4K titles, following on from the 2009/10 national and international hit tour of Macbeth.

And in 2009 they visited the Empire with their version of tragic love story Romeo and Juliet.

Every S4K show uses the whole Shakespearean plot, slotting the most famous original lines into modern language so that everyone – even the youngest primary school children – can understand.

The script flows, meaning most people don’t realise that approximately 20% of it is in Shakespeare’s own words.

There are also songs, dances and spellbinding effects as the fairies create a world of wonder in the woods.

S4K has plenty of adult fans too, with Dame Helen Mirren describing “The Dream” as ‘the Avatar of Shakespeare’.

Shakespeare 4 Kidz is at the Liverpool Empire with A Midsummer Night’s Dream on February 28 at 10.30am and 1.30pm.

Tickets are available on 0844 847 2525.

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