A Midsummer Night's Dream at Bristol Old Vic

Theatre at its most creative will take your very breath away, captivating the audience with the simplicity of its ideas and breadth of its imagination. War Horse, now a global phenomenon of course, embodies this creativity and must surely be a difficult act to follow for director Tom Morris and Handspring Puppet Company. What would their next collaboration be, and how could it live up to the heroic sacrifices of Joey and Albert in the trenches of war-torn France?

Well, Tom Morris took over as Artistic Director at Bristol Old Vic Theatre in 2009 and has reunited with Handspring to stage a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream the like of which you won't have seen before. This has long been viewed one of Shakespeare's more accessible plays - often taught to the younger secondary school years as a sort of 'look, isn't he fun?'  introduction to the Bard. As a teenager, the plot left me confused when I saw it as a lacklustre school play, but fortunately my daughters, with the benefit of a rather better education than mine, were now on hand to give me a synopsis.

The play does have a fiendish number of characters and events to grapple with - opening with Theseus, Duke of Athens and Hippolyta discussing their forthcoming nuptials. Then, there comes a love rectangle (if that's what you call a love triangle with an additional side) between four young Athenians. Hermia doesn't wish to marry her father's chosen suitor Demetrius, because she's in love with Lysander. Demetrius is in love with Hermia, but Helena is in love with Demetrius. Lysander and Hermia decide to elope and run away to the forest but Helena tells Demetrius in the hope of winning his affection.

In the same forest, a troupe of amateur actors gather to rehearse a play they're hoping to stage for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Nick Bottom the weaver is wildly enthusiastic and tries to take on every role, but the whole troupe is watched over and manipulated by the fairies who live in the forest. The fairy King and Queen, Oberon and Titania, have fallen out and Oberon decides he will teach his wayward wife a lesson. He calls on his mischievous jester Puck to gather magical juice from a flower called love-in-idleness and apply it to Titania's eyes when sleeping, so that when she awakes, she will fall in love with the first creature she sets eyes on. Overhearing Helena and Demetrius, Oberon also instructs Puck to spread some of the potion on the eyelids of the young Athenians, which sets the stage for a comedy of misplaced ardour on the grandest and most amusing of scales.

This Bristol Old Vic production signals from the beginning that this is a unique interpretation, as the four young Athenians enter with their own 'mini-me' puppets and often concentrate on delivering dialogue through these avatars rather than speaking directly to one another. If my family and I are anything to go by, I'd say it takes a little time to tune in (as with War Horse when at first you notice the actors inside the frames) - weren't these puppets just a distraction? As the plot developed however, they became so much more - an exchange of souls, almost Northern Lights style daemons, an embodiment of alienation and reconciliation.

The woodland teems with life and possibilities as Puck is constructed from a fantastically ingenious collection of everyday objects and the forest is represented by a chorus of planks of wood used to great effect - as trees, as beds, as musical instruments, a pack of hounds and so much more - they are the thread that weaves this production together. Theseus becomes Oberon and Hippolyta becomes Titania through mesmerising adornments; the gathering of the love-in-idleness is magical and the appearance of Bottom in his altered state has to be seen to be believed!

This play delivers in terms of acting as well as puppetry - there is great energy in the cast and the scene between the four young Athenians in the woods is utterly convincing, with special mention due to Akiya Henry as Hermia (though she be but little, she is fierce) and Naomi Cranston as Helena. David Ricardo Pearce is outstanding as Theseus/Oberon, and the performance of the band of actors at the end is so comically terrible, with Miltos Yerolemou in particular deserving great credit, that I found myself crying with laughter.

So, farewell to the rambling confusion of my old school play and welcome to this breathtaking and hilarious production - surely due, if the preview audience reaction was anything to go by, for a massively successful run in Bristol and beyond.

Rehearsal pictures courtesy of Bristol Old Vic

The Winter's Tale

So, we had a wonderful theatrical experience yesterday, my family and I. We drove to Stratford-on-Avon as a half-term treat, to see a matinee of The Winter's Tale at the RSC. This was no ordinary show but a unique performance, where those understudying for the principal players had the opportunity to show what they could do. But the whole ensemble was included, so this also meant that the likes of leading actors Tara Fitzgerald and Jo Stone-Fewings were involved in taking on some of the lesser parts.

The Winter's Tale, one of my bucket list of Shakespeare plays I'd yet to see, is a story of the destructive force of jealousy and yet is classed as one of Shakespeare's comedies (although sometimes also viewed as one of his 'problem plays'). In the opening scene, Leontes (Ben Whybrow), King of  Sicilia, is begging his life-long friend Polixenes (Daniel Millar), King of Bohemia, to extend his stay. Leontes' petition is unsuccessful, but his pregnant wife, Hermione (Bethan Walker) is more persuasive and this, together with witnessing their friendly kiss, is enough to convince Leontes of his wife's betrayal, that she is having an affair with Polixenes and is bearing his child. He orders that Polixenes should be poisoned, Hermione thrown into prison and the daughter born shortly thereafter abandoned on a foreign shore.

The first acts portray the descent from an affluent Pre-Raphaelite idyll of Sicilia at the play's opening to a darker place where bellies-with-child are punched without redress, until we are finally washed up on the shores of storm-lashed Bohemia. Lucy Bailey's production separates Sicilia from Bohemia by class rather than country, focusing on the divisions suggested by the text of the play, although how Bohemia serves as a Victorian industrial powerhouse for Sicilia when it consists mainly of frolicking shepherds isn't entirely clear.

Prior to seeing this production, I'd read a couple of reviews which were quite critical of the set and lighting, suggesting they were a distraction from the actors and that Bailey had focused on style over substance. I didn't find this so; the changing seascape was evocative without being overwhelming and the tower (although it didn't seem all that ivory-like, I only picked this up from the programme notes) introduced a dynamism quite welcome after so much exposition. It was also an effective means of demonstrating Leontes' isolation from the society he had so arbitrarily rejected.

The final acts are altogether a lighter affair, set in Bohemia some sixteen years later. Leontes' abandoned daughter Perdita (Bethan Walker/Emma Noakes sharing) has been adopted by an old shepherd and brought up in a rural setting of clog dancing, pick-pocketing and partying like there's no tomorrow. Prince Florizel (Andrew Hanratty), son of Polixenes, has fallen in love with her but, because of her perceived lowly birth, there are problems ahead, embodied by the unreasoning rage exhibited by Polixenes, but relieved by the superbly comic interventions of the peddler Autolycus (Duncan Wisbey).

Theatre is created anew at every performance and nothing can reinforce this so vehemently as an understudy run. This is a chance for the up and coming to impress and progress, and so it is exceptionally exciting to watch. Here and there were a few fluffed lines, but in the circumstances, it seems quite picky to mention them. I had my doubts about Ben Whybrow as Leontes at the beginning but he seemed to grow into the role. Bethan Walker was outstanding as Hermione (and sometimes Perdita) with not a whiff of the understudy about her -  she is surely destined for more leading roles. I hope all the understudies took as much from the experience as we did from being in the audience.

(Original cast images courtesy of the RSC)