Sydney Opera House is this week offering free livestreams of a most rare vision: the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new digital reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, narrated by Nick Cave, which harnesses video game technology and includes an interactive score conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Rehearsals for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Dream. Photo © Stuart Martin/RSC

Dream, which the Opera House is presenting as part of its digital program, was scheduled to open at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon as a hybrid in-person and online live performance in 2020, but has since been adapted for online audiences while theatres in the UK remain shuttered. The production – a collaboration with Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast and the Philharmonia Orchestra – uses real-time motion capture technology to draw the audience into a virtual midsummer forest. It follows the company’s 2016 collaboration with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios on The Tempest.

This new production stars EM Williams – whose credits include the theatrical adaptation of Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli’s film Princess Mononoke – as Puck, leading the audience from the real world into a virtual enchanted forest, with a cloud of fireflies lighting the...