Southwark Playhouse has come up with an 80-minute version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that is as delightful as it is brief. Designed by director Tony Hulse with a young audience in mind, it has taken the play’s existing magic and transformed it into a play imagined by children.
And not any children. The curtain rises – well, there is no curtain, this is very much in the round – on a set that is the quintessential Victorian nursery, complete with dolls’ house, rocking horse and dressing up box (designed by Georgie White). The six actors who play the Victorian children are convincing from the get-go with bossy Nancy (a formidable Daisy Ann Fletcher) organising everyone and deciding on the story.
This causes some initial problems. Nancy and Joan (Lara Grace Hori) want a love story with a happy ending. The boys (Martin Bassindale, Hintan Hayeck, Andy Umerah) want fighting, death scenes and, in the case of the youngest, Cecil (Dewi Wykes), a lion. Under no circumstances will they play girls (of course, they do). The two ideas are nevertheless forged by Nancy into – guess what? – Shakespeare’s plot and with quite a lot of his words, too, albeit interrupted by the children in their “real” characters trying to make sense of it all. This helps at times to explain some of the language to the actual children in the audience – there were three in front of me (I’d say ages 5, 7 and 10) who were at times mystified so this helped. They were also enchanted.
As well they might be. One of the things this engaging cast does is draw us into their game of make believe. The six play all the characters – lovers, fairies, rude mechanicals, Theseus and Hippolyta – with a little help from the audience. One man in a front-row seat is called upon to be Hermia’s father (he doesn’t have to speak, just shake his fist and look threatening). Another audience member has to stand in for Hippolyta when Nancy realises she can’t play that role and Hermia at the same time.
There are some very funny moments – the best of which is surely the longest and hammiest death scene for Pyramus in the history of the rude mechanicals’ play. (You can imagine the hilarity, too, in an audience with children of the very idea of a character called Bottom.) Dewi Wykes as the youngest child, Cecil, revels in his roles as the “naughty fairy” and the fearsome lion, hopping in and out of character to hide behind the curtain when he’s told off. In fact, all of the actors are utterly credible as children – we suspend disbelief pretty much immediately and, as is pointed out repeatedly, “everything in theatre is pretend”.
It all fits surprisingly well with the actual play that drifts in and out of the evening between games, squabbles and sulking. A Midsummer Night’s Dream for and with (pretend) children – a perfect introduction to Shakespeare.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at the Southwark Playhouse in Borough until 27th September. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk.
Photos by Charlie Lyne