Midsummer Night's Dream

[Sweder]

Midsummer Night’s Dream
Brighton Little Theatre at Lewes Castle

There’s an exchange in The Naked Gun where incompetent detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) is discussing security with the mayor (Nancy Marchand).

Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side like last year, that's my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdo’s dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in front of a full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards, that's my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakespeare In The Park Production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

I’ve always yearned to enjoy Shakespeare Al Fresco. The Brighton Little Theatre players come out to te sticks every summer and, for one week only, put on a fully costumed production of a famous or popular play in the Gun Garden at Lewes Castle. I found out about this quite by accident, stumbling across the piece last week in the company of SP as we exchange a public house for one serving curry. Having recovered from a blurry start on Saturday I pulled myself together long enough to reserve tickets for that night’s performance.

The audience, around sixty or so locals, armed themselves with rugs or folding chairs, bottles of wine and in some cases fully fledged picnics. The grassy courtyard, set below the main cobbled access into the castle proper, divided into three main chambers; stage, audience and wings. A small awning housed the sound and light mixing desk, a more fulsome tent set in the shadow of the main turret for the players. The stage, a simple series of lightly dressed benches, sat at one end beneath the great flint walls of Castle Keep. As the sun set and resident bats swooped to rid us of a plague of midges, soft floodlights eased to life, throwing shadows over the ancient walls and casting a hush over the excited throng.

The next few hours unfolded a treat of pure delight, the Bard’s funniest play presented in bawdy fashion by an excellent cast. The story opens with well-connected father Egeus' attempting to persuade Theseus, Duke of Athens, to force Egeus's errant daughter Hermia to eschew forbidden lover Lysander and marry her father’s beau of choice, Demetrius. To complicate matters Demetrius is wooed by Helena, played here with lusty vigour by the spunky Sally McIlhorne. Things get twisted when two peripheral tribes, the fairies led by the nefarious King Oberon and energised by skittish mischief-maker Robin Goodfellow, and a band of would-be players set to perform a piece before Theseus and the object of his desire Hyppolita, Queen of the Amazons*, weave a tangled web of loves lost, swapped and swapped again.

The story jigs and jags delightfully, Shakespeare at his most mischievous and mirthful, the players (aided by an excellent, unobtrusive sound system) doing full justice to a script peppered with satire and pithy barbs that would not be out of place in modern comedy. As the players came to speak of the moon and gestured skywards the blanket of moon-lit clouds slipping silent above our heads added rare and magical effect. It felt just as if we were sat in the woods watching Bottom and Snug practicing their play. The audience laughed heartily and often as the trysts and jokes played out, the actors giving full and enthusiastic account, none more so than Ed and John Tolputt (Nick Bottom and Peter Quince) and an effervescent Mike Williams as the suitably punk-haired anarchic puck Goodfellow.

There were a number of younger residents in the audience, Phoebe amongst them, who sat enthralled. Based on the excited chatter as we piled out of the gardens, hands warmed by generous applause, they all enjoyed it as much as I did.

[SIZE="1"]* I recently stumbled across the origins of Wonder Woman, heroine of DC Comics and subject of a recent illustrated novel by current author du jour Jodi Picoult. WW was an Amazonian (originally named Diana), and her mother was none other than Hyppolite, though there’s no obvious evidence to suggest that Theseus had a hand, or any other part of his anatomy, in her conception. [/SIZE]