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A midsummer treat
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
ACCESSIBLE SHAKESPEARE: Emily Stonelake as Bottom, Scout Worsley as Peter Quince, Shahin Rezvani as Flute and Boni Adeliyi as Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream [Pic: Helen Murray]
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Other Place
Stratford-upon-Avon
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
IT WAS a splendid move for the RSC to bring to their third theatre space Shakespeare’s magic comedy, in a late afternoon co-production with Britain’s leading young people’s Unicorn Theatre, for a summer that is likely to leave many families visiting Stratford looking for things to do with the kids.
Apart from box office satisfaction, this splendid 90-minute version will introduce the Bard to many youngsters who have not yet experienced what so often can be the soul-destroying academic study treatment.
Mums and dads too will enjoy a production which tells its story clearly with ebullient energy, the shaping of the text having lost little and, moreover, complemented by creative captioning. For example, the fairy band serving their Queen are not physical presences but are invisible voices with their projected words flitting around the stage walls: “a way of unlocking language for an audience who maybe haven’t experienced Shakespeare before.”
The eight strong cast are comfortably at home with their multiple roleplay, transferring from young couples entangled in their forest love games to rude mechanicals in colourful pantaloon costumes, preparing and delivering their own hilarious version of a classical tragedy.
It is almost unfair to single out performances, but Josephine-Fransilja Brookman’s bubbling sprite, Puck, stage-managing the show, Emmy Stonelake’s gloriously Welsh Bottom as comic hero, and Amelia Donkor’s Fairy Queen bewitched into believing the ass-transformed Bottom to be her love, will delight audiences from seven up.
The outstanding strength of the production rests with co-directors Rachel Bagshaw and Robin Belfield and their creative team. On a bare stage with many doors, shifting wall panels and the sole, all-purpose props consisting of a couple of large hanging tyres, they have created a show full of colour and movement.
One proviso. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s most poetically musical play. If this production, truncated as it is, could modulate the consistent volume of delivery, it would not be out of place on the RSC main stage.
Runs until August 30. Box office: 01789 331 111, rsc.org.uk
