Munya Chawawa is to make his stage acting debut, playing Bottom in a rave-based adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Shakespeare’s play – featuring  forest gatherings and psychedelic potions – has been adapted for a 1990s setting by Justin Audibert, artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre.

The show, now set on the Sussex Downs,  will revolve around ravers ‘kicking back against the rules imposed by their stuffy elders’ and will feature references to the politics of the 1990s, such as John Major’s Back To Basics campaign.

Audibert told the Sussex Express: ‘Munya Chawawa is the voice of satirical and political content online and really speaks to young audiences.’

‘It’s a play about conformity versus expression, and these will give us two great juxtapositions: family value politics versus the free party scene. You’re going to have Edwina Currie’s shoulder pads and Michael Heseltine’s hair on the one hand and you’re going to have glow sticks and whistles on the other.’

Chawawa last year founded the Black Boys Theatre Club to try to open up the world of theatre to black teenagers by arranging visits to plays. At the time he said: ‘Black men consistently dazzle us on stage and on screen, but for young Black boys, the bridge between that initial creative spark and its supernova potential isn’t always easy or encouraged.’

He follows in the footsteps of several other comedians who have played Bottom, including Matt Lucas, Benny Hill, Dawn French, Johnny Vegas, Al Murray, Ronnie Barker and Frankie Howerd. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will run from September 18 to October 17 as part of the theatre’s festival season. 

It also includes a new piece from W1A creator John Morton, starring Sarah Parish, who played  head of output Anna Rampton in the BBC satire. She and Spooks star Rupert Penry-Jones play siblings confronting their father’s mortality.

The play, which begins on May 8, is described as ‘a painfully funny, acute and delicate play about our struggle to communicate, in the face of life and of death. And our infinite capacity for drinking tea.’

And David Haig, known for his role in Ben Elton sitcom  The Thin Blue Line, writes and stars in the play Magic, which starts on April 24. He plays Arthur Conan Doyle opposite Hadley Fraser as Harry Houdini as they debate the nature of spirituality.