A park in Queanbeyan becomes a wood near Athens this month, as Echo Theatre revives its outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream after last year’s successful run.
Believed to have first been performed in 1595/96 for a wedding, Shakespeare’s beloved comedy deftly weaves together quarrelling fairies, young lovers at cross-purposes, love potions gone wrong, rude mechanicals, and Bottom making an ass of himself. Its mix of magic and mischief, moonlight and moonshine has inspired painters, composers, and opera-makers — and, as director Jordan Best argues, it remains irresistible.
“I never get sick of watching it. It’s such a funny, fun and beautiful story. I can’t see why we wouldn’t bring it back. The characters are recognisable; there’s magic, love, ridiculous misunderstandings, and the most magnificently terrible play within a play you’ve ever seen.”
Best — who also appears as Titania and Hippolyta — says Dream is “the perfect play for a summer evening”: accessible and fast-moving.
“I call it gateway Shakespeare. The story is easy to follow. So many jokes sound like they could have been written now. Comedy writers today would kill to write a character as beautifully drawn, within the first four lines, as Bottom.”
Echo’s production embraces the feel of a travelling troupe of players. All props and costumes are second-hand, recycled, or repurposed; a patchwork tent becomes the cast’s entrance; actors pull their outfits from a communal box; and the whole aesthetic leans towards colourful, lightly clowning fun.
The play will be staged in Aunty Louise Brown Park, outside The Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. The audience can bring their picnics and enjoy the show, while actors move through the crowd.
“It’s not the same as sitting in a theatre and it feeling important and structured,” Best says. “It’s a much looser and wilder kind of experience.”
Shakespeare, Best notes, is surprisingly well suited to the outdoors.
“It’s not about costumes, the sets, props or lights. It’s about the words and the actors. That becomes obvious when you’re performing outside, because there is no set and there are no lights; it is just the words and the actors.”
Performers might have to pause the show while a giant flock of cockatoos flies overhead, or cars drive by — but the space becomes part of the performance, Best says.
In fact, an outdoor, informal venue approximates the Elizabethan theatres: most of the audience stood under the open sky, and actors competed with orange sellers and inclement weather for the attention of the groundlings.
“You can actually see the audience,” Best says. “You can see their reactions. They become much more involved in what’s happening, because you can talk to them. The whole thing is alive.”
What stays with Best from last year’s performances is the children for whom Dream was their first Shakespeare.
“Kids would concentrate on what was happening, get distracted, and do handstands. At the end of it, they were helpless with laughter, watching Pyramus and Thisbe [the play within the play]. That’s their first experience of Shakespeare: not the boring thing you study at school, but amazing characters and ripping good stories.”
‘Tis almost fairy time.
“What better way to finish off a year that has felt like 25 years rolled into one, than to sit out under the stars and be entertained?”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, presented by Echo Theatre, directed by Jordan Best, Aunty Louise Brown Park, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 13–21 December. Pay What You Feel. Bookings: (02) 6285 6290 or https://theq.net.au/whats-on/a-midsummer-nights-dream-202.
