THEATRE REVIEW: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Carr's Park, Wilmslow.

Presented by Time And Again Theatre, this was an outdoor production of Shakespeare's most endearing and popular comedy, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. 

The play is set in Athens, and in this case, sometime in the middle of the 1980s. There is true love, unrequited love, mistaken love, and finally true love again. But first they have to journey into the forest and have the King of the fairies meddle with their amorousnesses for a while. Intertwined with all this is a group of amateur actors who are to perform a short play befoe the Duke of Athens for their sibling's wedding feast. Mischief abounds, magic potions turn affections, and the actors perform their play 'mechanically' (pun intended).

For an outdoor production, (which also started 20 minutes' late), performing, from what I could tell, the whole unabridged script was a little ambitious. Praiseworthy, but ambitious. Personally I think it would have benfitted from at least 30 minutes shaving from the running time. This can be done very easily with 'The Dream', as the plot is not complicated and there are many sections which can be (and indeed often are) cut from the play.

There were also a couple of things which, sadly, didn't help this partciular show. First of all was the decision to perform in what is known as traverse. This means that there is a long catwalk affair for the performers whilst the audience sit on both sides, giving the cast both narrow ends as their entrance and exits. This, coupled with the lack of amplification meant that each side would only actually hear maybe 50% of the dialogue when the actor was turned facing them. It was a real pity but most of the cast were unable to project their voices sufficiently, and therefore without any additional amplification, both my companion and I (as well as obviously many others) were struggling to hear much of the dialogue. Not guilty in this respect though were Kieran Palmer (Quince) and Tim Cooper (Snout), who both had lovely articulation and projection for this type of theatre. 

Another thing which conspired against them this evening was the lighting. I don't honestly think the company had rehearsed this play in the dark, since they had provided only three small LEDs, and all three were positioned on the ground. During the second half of the play, a techie moved two of them to the top of small three-step A-frane ladders, and although that was better, it was still insufficient. For the majority of the second half, not only were we struggling to hear the cast, but now we also had to contend with seeing shadows, silhouettes and no facial expressions too. I can only hope that this anomoly has been rectified for further performances.

As I mentioned at the start of the review, the play was set in the 1980s. I could see no real rationale for this deicision. It gave the cast the opportunity to wear some outrageous gear of that time, and bop along to the contemporaneous pop hits; but it actually added nothing to the plot or the characterisations, other than perhaps to give them a semi-legitimate excuse for androgynous and cross-gender casting. 

The cast in general were a talented troupe, and, despite being given some rather stilted and unimaginative direction, managed to find their own pace and physicality bringing some lovely comedic touches to their respective roles. In this regard, I must mention both Sam Bolton (Demetrius) and Sophia Smith (Bottom) who used thier phyiscality to great comedic effect throughout; again, something which is needed in the style of performance chosen by the company.

One major plus in their favour however was their adherence to the old theatrical maxim, the show must go on! At the eleventh hour, the actress due to perform the dual role of Hippolyta and Titania was unable to do so, and so their stalwart director, Laura Crow, donned the cossies and went on in her stead. Full marks!

Choosing to perform this play the way they did, felt much more apt for a conventional theatre space than an outdoor show. And in the so doing it gained little and lost much sadly.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall

on - 20.8.21