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| The finale of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
Directed by Miles Gregory
Presented by
The Pop Up Globe Buckingham’s CompanySydney Entertainment Quarter until 4th November, 2018
Opening
night performance on 5th September reviewed by Bill Stephens
Who would
have thought Shakespeare could be so much fun?
The brainchild of Dr. Miles Gregory, the Pop Up Globe is a full-scale
temporary working replica of the second Globe, built by Shakespeare and his
company in 1614 after the first Globe theatre burnt down. Originally created in
Auckland, as a one-off to celebrate the 400th anniversary of
Shakespeare’s death, the Pop Up Globe aimed at providing audiences with the
immersive experience of seeing Shakespeare performed in the space for which it
was written.
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| A scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
So successful were the original seasons that the
first international season was mounted in Melbourne in 2017, where again
sell-out audiences couldn’t get enough of this unique and transformative
experience.
The Pop Up
Globe has now been installed in the Entertainment Quarter in Sydney where, over
the next three months, two full companies, The Buckingham and The Southampton,
will perform productions of four of Shakespeare’s most popular plays in the
style of the original stagings, in repertory. The four plays are “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream”, “A Comedy of Errors”, “Macbeth” and “The Merchant of Venice”.
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| Tom Wingfield (Helena) - Jade Daniels (Puck) in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
The Sydney
season opened with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
A riotous, bawdy interpretation directed by Miles Gregory for The Buckingham’s.
For this production, as was usual in Shakespeare’s time, the female roles of Helena, Hermia and a
delightfully rotund Titania, were played
by men, (Thomas Wingfield, Max Loban and Asalema Tofete respectively), who,
while assiduously avoiding the temptation to camp up their roles, found plenty
of nuances in their lines with which to convulse their knowing audience.
Gregory
imagined his Mechanicals as contemporary tradies, led by lanky Chris
Huntly-Turner as Bottom, and a female actor, Sarah Griffin, as Flute, all
complete with high-vis jackets and hard hats. It made sense and worked a treat.
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| Jade Daniels (Puck) in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
But more
unusually, Gregory has cast his fairies as Maori gods who speak te reo Maori,
in a translation by Pierre Lyndon. A masterstroke, for although the words may
have been intelligible to most of the audience, the performance of them by
Jason Te Kare, (Oberon), Asalema Tofete, (Titania) and especially Jade Daniels,
quite magical as Puck, imbued the
production with a charming mystical quality, their meaning quite obvious.
Confident,
exuberant performances from all the cast, most of whom play at least two roles,
together with excellent costuming and production values insure a wonderfully
entertaining evening, but it’s the unique environment of the Globe Pop Up which
makes this production such a memorable experience.
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| The lovers quarrel in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
Whether you enjoy a performance in the comparative comfort
of seated tiered balconies, or standing among the more adventurous
“groundlings”, mosh-pit style in front of the stage, dodging blood, missiles
and fleeing actors, experiencing a
performance of a Shakespeare play in this environment really is something not
to be missed.