The Alleynian 702 2014

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Middle School Play S et against a backdrop of 1960s’ pop music, this vibrant production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , adapted and directed by Kathryn Norton-Smith and Jess Payne, became a psychedelic romp, in which the fairies – sinewy male and female choruses who provided an organic, otherworldly irreverence – reminded the audience that the play is about human impulse and the unpredictability of emotion. Colour was sumptuous and cleverly themed – greens and blues for Oberon’s entourage, warmer pinks and oranges for Titania’s – and the scaffold set created a fabulous playground for the likes of Puck to cavort and watch the human antics ‘for sport’. This was truly an ensemble piece and so it is hard to single out individual performances; however,

an excellent impish accomplice, while Phoebe Campbell’s Titania was by turns imperious and skittish. The physicality and impetuous impulse of the lovers kept the audience highly entertained, particularly as the chase took hold in the woods. As a pre-Christmas treat, the whole piece was both magical and very funny. The mechanicals were a disarming troupe, with ‘bully Bottom’ increasingly charming and convincing as the piece progressed. Quince’s (Hamish Lloyd-Barnes) exuberant ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ as the mechanicals hear that they will perform their play at Theseus’s wedding feast caused a great ripple of laughter in the audience – I think most of us left the theatre saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

Marcus Kottering’s Oberon had great style and command, vivifying the famous speech,‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows…’, with Daniel Norton-Smith’s agile, fluid Puck,

MISS HELEN ADIE

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