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Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Observer (July 1990)
Fairy favourite with a bold face
Theater-lovers have just three nigths left to take advantage of a Midsummer Night's Dream, noteable for boldness of approach and earthiness.
Director Rob Kay has taken Shakespeare's ethereal favourite and blown the dust off it.
Despite its Belle Epoch flavour, its austere denial of the last vestiges of scenery for the Manor Garden's setting, and the overt erotiscism brought to the surface, this is not an act of vandalism but of love.
While the delightful frivolity of Oberon and Puck's fairy mischief-making is retained - indeed wonderfully exploited by Terence Hattermore and Dominic Campbell - Rob Kay's casting of Lawry Rhodes as Bottom is inspired.
Lawry revels in a full-blooded interpretation of the thespian rustic, lapsing into broad Yorkshire and introducing a hint of Ilkley Moor to his singing.
The sympathetic production of The Dream has a simplicity of exposition which gives it an immediate and sustained appeal. It was a joy, on Monday night, to see many young children in the audience rocking with laughter as the luckless Titania, played ingenuously by Sally Allen, is made through Oberon and Puck's nocturnal naughtiness to fall hopelessly for ass-headed Bottom.
A cast with few obvious weaknesses sees Laura Parris play a spirited Hermia to Tamsyn Webb's Helena. Their fight scene is tooth-and-claw realism.
Anthony Vent's Lysander is a passionate suitor to Hermia, in keeping with a production which does not gloss coyly over its pursuits, and is well matched by Jonathan Clarkson as his rival for her affections.
Lawry Rhodes is in good company with John Simmonds, Mark Pelham, Eric Stevens, Mark Allen and Denis Drooke, who together extract maximum fun from their ham-fisted little play.
You either love Rob Kay's view or fail to understand his intent. I loved it. When the new moon looks down over Manor Barn and Bottom brays his ass's head off to Puck's delight, there is magic in the summer air.
JD
- JD, Bexhill Observer, 2/8/90
Review reproduced by permission
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