DREAM (Royal Shakespeare Company)***

 

By Dave 

Link: https://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on 

Available until: There is at least one livestream every day except Monday until Saturday 20^th March. Performances times very a lot, ranging from 10am to 8pm.

Dream is a stunning and extraordinary production based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream which makes use of technology and the power of movement. It can be enjoyed for free as a member of the audience or you can buy an Audience Plus ticket and have some influence on what is seen onscreen.

The first thing to say is this is not a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a shorter name. It features Puck and the Fairies and there are lines in it which people who know the play will find very familiar but it doesn’t follow the play word for word and the complete video, including the introduction and post-show talk, is only fifty minutes long.

If you want a quick introduction to the Shakespeare play, this probably isn’t the best performance to watch. It’s not that easy following the story even if you do know the play so I don’t think anyone could find out what the story of the play is by watching Dream.

If you like artistic and technologically-advanced productions, you might enjoy this even if you don’t know the Shakespeare play. There is a lot to watch and admire. The way the forest has been created, the way the fairies move around the forest and the beauty of the images onscreen are seriously impressive.

If you like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and you’d like to see a new retelling of the story, this would be a great choice. You can follow the story in your mind, work out what’s happening and listen out for those quotes.

The actors don’t appear in the show. They speak their lines and control the images that are seen onscreen but we don’t actually see them. The characters look great and the movement is very clever but one thing I did miss was seeing the faces. It was difficult to tell the characters apart and no faces means no facial expressions.

I didn’t catch the names of most of the actors when they introduced themselves and I can’t find a cast list but Puck is played by EM Williams. I think the actors chose their own movements and the Puck avatar is very lithe and doesn’t keep still. In the post-show talk, it was interesting to see how some of the effects were achieved but I’m giving nothing away.

 

It’s very enjoyable, it’s very clever, it’s a completely new way of realising A Midsummer Night’s Dream and well worth a watch.