A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Shake-Scene Shakespeare)*****

  

By Cal 

Link: https://www.patreon.com/shakesceneshakespeare

Available until: Unknown

It’s easy to think of a play as something that’s there to entertain the audience. The cast and creatives do their job. We enjoy ourselves. But actually, acting can be a lot of fun for the performers too and that’s something you really notice with Shakes-Scene Shakespeare. They’re having an absolutely brilliant time.

They also know how to play around. For me, this is different from messing around. Anyone can mess around with Shakespeare. Talking in silly voices, exaggerating the words and not even trying to understand it… that’s messing around. But in order to play around, you need to know exactly what you’re dealing with. You need to understand the story, the characters and the language. Then you can play around with it in whatever way you like to enhance everything that’s already there. This is something Shake-Scene do brilliantly and it’s something that comes across particularly strongly in a comedy like A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It is common in Zoom plays to use no more actors than you need. I can see the sense of this – the screen is small and sometimes an actor can get lost in a crowd scene. You have to find the person who’s speaking and with so many people onscreen, it’s easy to miss some brilliant reactions. But up to a certain point, more actors can give a scene more life. Book holder and director Lizzie Hughes decided to have ten fairies instead of the usual four (there is also an unnamed fairy, but I think this role is usually given to one of the main four). The first advantage is that you have swings and understudies right there in case you need them. The second advantage is that it’s realistic for Titania to have more than four fairy servants. She’s the Queen of the Fairies! Would she really be happy just with four?

Actors also get a lot of choice in how they can play a fairy – they don’t have to look human so you can really have fun with costumes, make-up and props. This is something you can really appreciate on Zoom – if you’re a certain distance away from the stage in the real theatre, you’ll miss out on a lot of the details. But on Zoom (at least when there are no more than 16-25 squares), you can see a lot more and the fairies in this play are great to watch. It really adds to the feeling of magic. The actors also have some ingenious methods of hiding.

As usual, there’s a very strong cast. A lot of the characters seem very different from the way they’re usually performed, which is always great to see. It’s difficult to say whether that’s intentional or whether it’s just my interpretation of the characters, but I loved these apparent reimaginings of characters we know so well. Oberon can seem jealous and silly, but Mark Cassidy’s Oberon seems wise and authoritative which puts a very interesting slant on what he does to Titania. Suzanne Taylor is a lovely Titania who seems more vulnerable than many. Valentina Vinci’s unusually glamorous Puck is full of character and a lot of fun to watch. And why shouldn’t Puck be glamorous?

The Mechanicals are a lot of fun. Quince is quite often played as a female character, but Linda Mathis’ very serious but very likeable Quince seems to be a male character and that works too. Bottom is often seen as a character who never listens to anyone, but Oliver Hewett makes a lot of his interruptions sound so reasonable and his offers to play other parts sound quite kind. I’ve never seen Bottom played in this way before, but it really works and he’s still funny. Bottom doesn’t need to be a big attention-seeker. He can be someone who honestly wants to help make the play as good as it can be… even if he doesn’t always go about it in the best possible way. It was also great to see Matt Williams’ unusually masculine Flute, and Snout, a character who often fades into the background a bit for me, is adorably eager when played by Geraldine Brennan.

Lysander is usually the geeky lover while Demetrius is the streetwise one, but in this production, they almost swap places. Alexandra Kataigida is a decisive Lysander while Philippe Bosher’s Demetrius is sweet and quirky and the story works just as well this way. After all, Lysander knows exactly what he wants when he’s not under a spell and Demetrius keeps changing his mind. Nell Bradbury is mostly a sweet Hermia, but she loses her temper brilliantly when required. Claire Richards is persistent as Helena without quite falling into stalker territory. I really like all of them.

Siegffried Loew-Walker’s Theseus has all the authority you’d expect, but there’s something very sensual in his performance and he speaks his lines beautifully. There’s another great performance from Eugenia Low as Hippolyta and for the first time, I found myself having a lot of sympathy with Egeus – Geoffrey Kirkness portrays him as angry but helpless.

Another very enjoyable performance from Shake-Scene Theatre Company. They’ve just started a history cycle which will show another side to their talents – but I can’t wait to see who they cast as Falstaff. They have so many comedic geniuses to choose from!